natural and inevitable development in Protestant theological pedagogy. As Protestant theology became established at the national level it moved from the pulpit into the university. Thus, in the late sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies, the phenomenon of Protestant scholasticism developed. Much ink has been spilt in this particular area and most of it, one must add, to little scholarly profit. Talk of scholasticism as incipient Enlightenment rationalism, as a ‘hardening’ of the kerygmatic theology of the reformers or as an attempt to obscure simple biblical truth is largely misplaced. Scholasticism was

doi:10.4324/9780203166505-21

Chapter

natural and inevitable development in Protestant theological pedagogy. As Protestant theology became established at the national level it moved from the pulpit into the university. Thus, in the late sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies, the phenomenon of Protestant scholasticism developed. Much ink has been spilt in this particular area and most of it, one must add, to little scholarly profit. Talk of scholasticism as incipient Enlightenment rationalism, as a ‘hardening’ of the kerygmatic theology of the reformers or as an attempt to obscure simple biblical truth is largely misplaced. Scholasticism was

Chapter

natural and inevitable development in Protestant theological pedagogy. As Protestant theology became established at the national level it moved from the pulpit into the university. Thus, in the late sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies, the phenomenon of Protestant scholasticism developed. Much ink has been spilt in this particular area and most of it, one must add, to little scholarly profit. Talk of scholasticism as incipient Enlightenment rationalism, as a ‘hardening’ of the kerygmatic theology of the reformers or as an attempt to obscure simple biblical truth is largely misplaced. Scholasticism was

ABSTRACT

Protestant scholasticism was, methodologically speaking, the inevitable result of moving a discipline into a university setting which was rooted in the culture of medieval and Renaissance pedagogy. It also represented the necessary outcome of aspects which, as previously noted, were implicit in the Reformation project itself: a desire to develop and define correct doctrinal and exegetical norms in order that true theology might be expounded and defended, and that ministers might be equipped with a thorough knowledge of the biblical text, thus enabling them to communicate its message to their congregations. It was, therefore, in some ways the heir to some of the authoritarian aspects of Luther’s original breakthrough, in that it placed the keys to knowledge in the hands of church leaders and not fanatics. But in other ways it was tailored towards the doctrinal well-being of the church as a whole, including the laity and, in theory at least, pointed to the notion of church leaders being the theological servants of the laity.