As Christians, we affirm that Scripture is our supreme guide to truth and righteousness. Some wish to go further and assert that it is our only guide. But how then can we account for the remarkable insight and moral integrity that many unbelievers seem to display? Indeed, how to account for the myriad ways in which believers themselves navigate the world based on knowledge and intuition not always derived from Scripture?Enter the doctrine of natural law. Frequently misrepresented as an assertion of the autonomous power of human reason or as a uniquely Roman Catholic doctrine, natural law has actually been an integral part of orthodox Christian theology since the beginning, and is even clearly asserted in Scripture itself.In this brief guide, David Haines and Andrew Fulford explain the philosophical foundations of natural law, clear up common misunderstandings about the term, and demonstrate the robust biblical basis for natural law reasoning.

Natural Law: A Brief Introduction and Biblical Defense

Religion & Spirituality

Haines, David

Fulford, Andrew A.

Christian Books & Bibles

Davenant Institute, The

Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is one of the great landmarks of Protestant theological literature, and indeed of English literature generally, but is scarcely read today on account of its difficult and archaic style. The time has come to translate it into modern English so that Hooker may teach a new generation of churchmen and Christian leaders about law, reason, Scripture, church, and politics. In this initial offering of a multi-year translation project by the Davenant Trust, we present a short and accessible sample of Richard Hooker’s profound insight and rhetorical genius, in the form of his Preface to the work. This wide-ranging discourse on the psychology of religious and political radicalism, and the need to balance the demands of conscience with legal order, is much more than a mere preface, with startlingly relevant insights for the church and the task of Christian citizenship today.This fully revised 2nd edition contains a much-expanded introduction to the life of Richard Hooker, and a comprehensive revision of the translation for greater clarity and accuracy.

Radicalism: When Reform Becomes Revolution: The Preface to Hooker's Laws: A Modernization

Hooker, Richard

The doctrine of creation concerns our beginning, but also our destiny, since the world to come is the new creation.But Christians have long debated: how much does the first creation have in common with the last? And what does this mean for Christians, who live even now with a foot in both? Our answer to these questions conditions our answer to many others: the relationship of philosophy to theology, of the church to the saeculum, of the kingdom of Christ to the visible church. This volume brings together the careful investigations of established and emerging historians and theologians, exploring how these questions have been addressed at different points in Christian history, and what they mean for us today.Learn more about The Davenant Institute at www.davenantinstitute.org.

For the Healing of the Nations (2nd ed.): Essays on Creation, Redemption, and Neo-Calvinism

Littlejohn, Brad

Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is one of the great landmarks of Protestant theological literature, and indeed of English literature generally. However, on account of its difficult and archaic style, it is scarcely read today. The time has come to translate it into modern English so that Hooker may teach a new generation of churchmen and Christian leaders about law, reason, Scripture, church, and politics.In this third volume of an ongoing translation project by the Davenant Institute, we present Books II-III of Hooker’s Laws, comprising Hooker’s treatment of Scripture’s authority in relation to the authority of reason and human law. Hooker contends that although Scripture does not change, human affairs do, and so our application of Scripture to changing human societies (including the Church) requires the use of reason, prudence, and historical awareness. Scripture is our highest authority, but not the only authority that regulates human life. Perhaps more than any other part of the Laws, Hooker’s careful analysis of the relationship between the Word of God and the words of man remains intensely relevant to Christians today struggling to uphold the authority of the Bible without distorting it.

The Word of God and the Words of Man: Books II and III of Richard Hooker's Laws: A Modernization (Hooker's Laws in Modern English)

Throughout the history of Christianity, the relationship of philosophy and theology has been fraught with conflict and tension, but it is a conflict that no faithful Christian can ignore. At every period of church history, leading scholars and teachers of Scripture have also sought to compare and reconcile the Word of God with what can be learned from the study of nature and human reason. The Protestant Reformation was no exception, and this dual pursuit of philosophy and theology was particularly exemplified by the great Italian Reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli. A leading representative both of Renaissance humanism, with its return to the classical sources, and of an emergent Protestant scholasticism, with its careful use of philosophical tools to clarify Christian doctrine and ethics, Vermigli constantly attended to the relationship of philosophy and theology throughout his teaching and writing. This volume brings together, in a carefully-edited modern translation, extensive excerpts from Vermigli’s biblical commentaries that illustrate his use of philosophical tools and his tackling of philosophical problems in the biblical text. These include classic problems such as the relation of soul and body, the role of divine providence, and the nature of our knowledge of God, as well as more particular questions, such as the nature and meaning of dreams. Together, these selections illustrate that our modern dichotomy between biblical and philosophical studies was thoroughly unknown to the Protestant Reformers, and offer a window into the thought of one of the leading intellects of the sixteenth century. Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) was born in Florence and educated in Padua before rising through the ranks of the Augustinian order in Italy. A secret convert to Protestantism in the 1530s, he eventually fled north to Germany in 1542, before holding a series of influential posts at Strasbourg, Oxford, and Zurich. He ranks alongside John Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger as among the chief architects of the Reformed Protestant tradition. Joseph C. McClelland (1925-2016) was a Presbyterian minister and the McConnell Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University. He devoted decades of his life to the study of Peter Martyr Vermigli and was among the founding editors of the Peter Martyr Library. The Peter Martyr Library, begun in 1994 by the Peter Martyr Vermigli Society, is a scholarly project to make availability to a modern audience, in critical edition translations from the Latin, the key writings of Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli. Published by Truman State University Press until 2017, the Peter Martyr Library is now overseen and published by The Davenant Institute, now for the first time in paperback.

Philosophical Works: On the Relation of Philosophy to Theology (Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies)

Politics & Social Sciences

Vermigli, Peter Martyr

Philosophy

Protestantism today has an idolatry problem. Not merely in the sense of worshipping false gods—of pleasure, wealth, or politics—but in the sense of worshipping the Triune God of Scripture according to images and ideas of our own devising. Whether it’s a God who suffers and changes alongside his creatures, or a “Trinitarian circle dance” of divine personalities, or a hierarchically-arranged Trinity that serves as a blueprint for gender relations, modern evangelical theology has strayed far from historic Christian orthodoxy. Needing a God that can be put on a greeting card or in a praise song, our idolatrous hearts shrink the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob down to size, and make him more like us.
Amidst this scramble to make God more relevant, we seem to have forgotten that the only God truly capable of saving us is a God who is radically other and transcendent, far above our imaginings. This incomprehensible God is not the God of the philosophers, as modern revisionists frequently charge, but the God of the Bible. The essays in this volume, written by scholars and pastors deeply concerned for the life of the church, seek to retrieve and defend the tradition of classical theism as the historic Protestant faith, rooted in Scripture, philosophically coherent, and still relevant to the needs of the church today.

God of Our Fathers: Classical Theism for the Contemporary Church

Littlejohn, Bradford

Today, millions of people in the modern West identify as atheists. And even for believers, the intellectual and spiritual temptations to deny the existence of God seem greater than ever. Too often we respond to this pressure by seeking more and more rational proofs of God's existence, but what if a lack of reason to believe is not our main problem? In this volume, Joseph Minich argues that our real challenge is existential and imaginative—a felt absence of God that is more visceral in our modern world than for most generations past, and the sense that if God cannot be sensed, He cannot be there. Why are we so haunted and disoriented today by this sense of God's absence? And how can we learn to sustain and strengthen our faith in the face of it? In these pages, Minich charts a way back to a renewal of our hearts and imaginations that can enable us to embrace the challenge of finding and being found by the hidden God.

Enduring Divine Absence: The Challenge of Modern Atheism (Davenant Engagements)

Minich, Joseph

Atheism

In this last work of Vermigli’s distinguished career as a theologian, he uses a dialogue to discuss the disagreement among Christians about the Eucharist and Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper. 
Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) is considered to be one of the most important Italian reformers of the early modern period. Martyr is the subject of renewed interest for historical and theological scholars. The Peter Martyr Library, a series of critical English translations of the chief works of Peter Martyr Vermigli, allows his own words in context to speak for themselves.

Dialogue on the Two Natures in Christ

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