The Hallowing of Logic: The Trinitarian Method of Richard Baxter’s Methodus Theologiae

While Richard Baxter (1615-91) has been called the ‘chief of English Protestant schoolmen’, few studies of his theology exist, and none of his major systematic work the Methodus Theologiae (1681). Through examining the scriptural and metaphysical foundations of his exemplaristic logic, and engaging extensively with his medieval and early modern sources, this study presents Baxter’s understanding of method as the unfolding of the believer’s relation with the Triune God through salvation history, revealing his profound debt to Scotist and Nominalist thought. In tracing the manifold ramifications of this method it offers a fresh reading of Baxter’s soteriology, countering the charges of moralism and rationalism often levelled at him, and placing his thought within a scholastic paradigm of ‘faith seeking understanding’.