Prolegomena: A Defense of the Scholastic Method

Since the Luther Renaissance in the early twentieth-century, many scholars of the Reformation period have argued for a strong discontinuity between the early Protestant reformers and the following age of Protestant Scholasticism. Such a claim is exemplified by Radical Lutheranism, which purports that Luther’s theology is incommensurate with that of the scholastic movements of the seventeenth century. In this work, Jordan Cooper defends the scholastic approach as a genuine outgrowth of Reformation theology and offers a critique of the theological system of Radical Lutheranism. He does this through a thorough exposition of the method used by Martin Chemnitz, Johann Gerhard, and other post-Reformation thinkers. He demonstrates that the foundational metaphysical assumptions of the Lutheran scholastics are both consistent with the Reformation and necessary for the church today. This book is the beginning of a series titled A Contemporary Protestant Scholastic Theology.