Protestant Nominalism: An Analysis of Post-Reformation (1555-1662) Protestant Philosophical Theology

Abstract

This project addresses critiques of Protestantism based on the thesis that Protestant philosophical theology is constitutively Scotist and/or nominalist in its metaphysics – what I call the “Protestant-nominalist critique” – and assesses them against the philosophical theologies of representative theologians from the Anglican and Lutheran traditions. For this analysis of Protestant philosophical theology I concentrate on theologians from the post-Reformation period, for the reason that the Protestant-nominalist critique and the responses to it to date are largely focused on first-generation Reformers, and therefore could be extended by further research into this later phase of Protestant development. In Chapter One I introduce the Protestant-nominalist critique by identifying its origins in early-modern Roman Catholic apologetics, and by tracing its development through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up to the present. I then analyze the basic elements or features of the Protestant-nominalist critique as articulated by Milbank, Gregory, etc: the argument from metaphysical univocity, the argument from metaphysical competition, the passivity argument, the modal argument, the extrinsicist argument, the argument from theological voluntarism, the disintegration argument, and the anti-intellectualist argument. Following this analysis, I outline the various responses to the Protestant-nominalist critique in the literature to date. I then argue that both the Protestant-nominalist critique and the responses to it can be illuminated by further exploration of Protestant philosophical theology during the post-Reformation period (1555-1662). The next four chapters form the heart of the thesis. They analyze the philosophical theologies of two Anglican and two Lutheran theologians, focusing on whether, and in what ways, they do or do not match with the characterization of Protestantism as Scotist-nominalist. I select these figures based on four criteria: timeframe, representativeness, relevance, and accessibility. By the timeframe criterion I restrict my analysis to those figures who were alive and active during the post-Reformation period; by representativeness I refer to those figures who are central and defining, as opposed to peripheral or idiosyncratic, within their respective traditions; on the relevance criterion I select figures who treat relevant philosophico-theological topics (e.g., analogy/univocity, divine and created causality, etc.) with sufficient range and depth for a satisfactorily comprehensive analysis; and by accessibility I prefer figures who are clearer, more precise, and, preferably, more systematic in their treatment and arrangement of these topics relative to the alternatives. Using these criteria, I select as my interlocutors John Davenant for Jacobean Anglicanism, John Bramhall for Laudian Anglicanism, Martin Chemnitz for Confessional Lutheranism, and Johann Gerhard for Orthodox Lutheranism. In the fifth and final chapter, I conclude from my analysis that the identification of Protestant philosophical theology with Scotism-nominalism is not borne out in these representative figures, that the relationship between philosophical and doctrinal theology in Protestantism is underdetermined, and that other, non-philosophical concerns (such as exegesis and pastoral concerns) are in some cases more governing for Protestant doctrinal theology than philosophical theology. I conclude the chapter and the dissertation by drawing out some of the scholarly, practical, and ecclesial implications of my research and its conclusions.