The ability to work productively in the field of theology, as in any long-established discipline, rests in no small measure upon the mastery of vocabulary. The task is doubly difficult for English-speaking students. In the first place, the technical language of theology is still frequently in Greek or Latin. Not only is the precision of the original languages often lost in the transition to English, but many of the standard works in the field of theology continue to use the Greek and Latin terms, assuming that students have mastered the vocabulary. The problem is complicated, in the second place, by the fact that most of the contemporary lexical aids developed for English-speaking theological students are completely in English, including both the terms and their definitions. These considerations alone were enough inducement to lead one toward writing a brief dictionary of Greek and Latin theological terms.
There is one other issue, however, which makes the need for such a lexicon even more pressing: that issue concerns the Protestant heritage and its appropriation in and for the present, for the education of future ministers and teachers, and for the good of the church. Protestants have at their disposal a wealth of finely wrought theological systems, not only from the Reformers, but also from their successors, the theologians and teachers of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These latter writers took the ideas of the Reformers and, for the sake of preserving Protestantism from external attack and internal dissolution, forged a precise and detailed technical edifice of school-theology, which is now called Protestant orthodoxy or Protestant scholasticism. Not only did these orthodox or scholastic Protestants sustain the historical progress of the Reformation and transmit its theology to later generations, but they also clarified and developed the doctrines of the Reformers on such topics as the threefold office of Christ, the two states of Christ, the Lord’s Supper, and predestination.
The work of these theologians is well described by the two terms “scholastic” and “orthodox.” The former term refers primarily to method, the latter primarily to dogmatic or doctrinal intention. In the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, both Reformed and Lutheran theologians adopted a highly technical and logical approach to theological system, according to which each theological topic, or locus, was divided into its component parts, and the parts were analyzed and then defined in careful propositional form. In addition, this highly technical approach sought to achieve precise definition by debate with adversaries and by use of the Christian tradition as a whole in arguing its doctrines. The form of theological system was adapted to a didactical and polemical model that could move from biblical definition to traditional development of doctrine, to debate with doctrinal adversaries past and present, to theological resolution of the problem. This method is rightly called scholastic both in view of its roots in medieval scholasticism and in view of its intention to provide an adequate technical theology for schools—seminaries and universities. The goal of this method, the dogmatic or doctrinal intention of this theology, was to provide the church with “right teaching,” literally, “orthodoxy.”
I cannot here engage in the debate over the theology of the Protestant orthodox; some have called it dry, rigid, and a distortion of the Reformation; others, among them Karl Barth, have declared it to be a rich and abundant source of theological insight and have viewed it as a legitimate extension of the thought of the Reformers. What is undeniable is the technical expertise of the Protestant scholastics and their impact on modern Protestant theology, as evidenced in the works of Charles Hodge, Francis Pieper, Louis Berkhof, Otto Weber, and, of course, Karl Barth. The problem here is that the theology of the Protestant orthodox is only partially available to students. Standard resources that present orthodox or scholastic Protestantism, such as Heppe’s Reformed Dogmatics and Schmid’s Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, give the technical terms, frequently without full definition and, particularly in the case of Heppe, in Latin or Greek without translation. The problem of language carries over into the excellent manuals of Pieper and Berkhof. It is my hope that this dictionary will make this foundational Protestant theology and its terms more accessible and ultimately provide students not only with an incentive to study this essential terminology, but also with a point of entry into Heppe and Schmid and into the great Latin systems of authors like Francis Turretin and Johann Wilhelm Baier.
The use of both Lutheran and Reformed sources in the compilation of this vocabulary has led to a considerable amount of comparison of doctrine in the longer, more substantive definitions, like that of communicatio idiomatum. My attempt in all such comparisons has been to draw out in brief the distinctive elements and the common ground of the two positions without making any judgment concerning which holds the better solution to a given doctrinal problem. I hope that the dictionary will be useful to Reformed and Lutheran alike, without prejudice to either, and that it will provide a useful point of entry into the vocabulary and the thought of the two great representative orthodoxies of the Protestant world.
I should perhaps note at this point that this glossary is neither a complete comparative vocabulary of Protestant orthodoxy nor a complete system of theology arranged alphabetically. The former would be a book many times the length of this one; the latter is rendered unnecessary by the indexes to the standard systems. The object of this volume is to provide an introductory theological vocabulary that will help students to overcome the difficulties inherent in current English-language works that use Latin and Greek terms and even to move somewhat beyond the vocabulary of those works. Students will, I hope, use it with Heppe, Schmid, Pieper, and Berkhof.
The Protestant scholastics had an incredibly rich and precise theological vocabulary. They drew, first, on the heritage of the Reformation, particularly upon the Reformers’ reading of the biblical message of salvation by grace alone and justification through faith alone. This first source provided a Latin theological vocabulary that took and modified terms from the medieval and patristic writers in the light of Scripture—and, in addition, a Greek theological vocabulary from the New Testament that was virtually inaccessible before the great development of linguistic scholarship in the age of the Renaissance and Reformation. Second, the Protestant scholastics drew, as the Reformers themselves had drawn, upon those terms from the patristic era and from the Middle Ages that had become the standard currency of theological discussion, such as the terms definitive of trinitarian and christological orthodoxy in the Nicene and Chalcedonian symbols. In this category, however, the Protestant orthodox go far beyond the Reformers in their acceptance and use of terms. The difficult work of rebuilding theological system and of refuting the polemic of their scholastic Roman Catholic opponents led the Protestant orthodox into detailed patristic research and into a careful reading of medieval theology, with the result that a vaster array of technical terms from the fathers and from the medieval doctors appears in their systems than in the works of the Reformers. Third, the Protestant orthodox, in the process of developing systems, and of coming to terms more fully than Reformers with the tradition of the church, drew upon the philosophical vocabulary of the fathers and the medieval doctors. Here especially the Protestant orthodox manifest a concern to broaden and develop the technical capabilities of their theology, but not at the expense of the insights of the Reformers. As a result, they not only used a traditional philosophical vocabulary in connection with theological system but also developed a vocabulary concerned with the limitation of philosophical and theological knowledge: see, e.g., usus philosophiae and theologia ectypa. This multiplication of terms available to the theologian relates directly to the precision of thought and expression typical of the scholastic Protestant systems.
In compiling my basic list of terms, I have worked with two ends in view: first, the accurate presentation of the vocabulary of Protestant orthodoxy; second, the needs of students in their encounter with works currently accessible in which the orthodox or scholastic Protestant vocabulary appears. In order to achieve the first goal, I have consulted Lutheran and Reformed systems of the seventeenth century, principally the systems of Johann Wilhelm Baier and Francis Turretin, together with the standard compendia of Protestant orthodox theology by Heinrich Schmid and Heinrich Heppe. I have extracted all the technical terms from Schmid and Heppe, revising and modifying where necessary on the basis of Baier and Turretin. In order to satisfy the second goal, I have also worked through the systems of two standard exponents of twentieth-century Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxy, Francis Pieper and Louis Berkhof. From these works, I have extracted only terms; I have not translated either lengthy quotations in Latin or Greek or any of the biblical citations given in the original, nor have I included any of the German or Dutch words that appear here and there in Pieper and Berkhof. The resultant list, I hope and believe, will not only be of great service to students in their study of classic works in Protestant theology but will also become, for those same students, a way of entry into the realm of clear and precise theological expression.
This book would not exist, certainly not in its present form, were it not for the encouragement and help of many friends and colleagues. A first word of thanks must go to Allan Fisher of Baker Book House for suggesting this project and for his encouragement throughout the process of writing and editing. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Pastor Luther Poellot, known to many as translator of an important work of the orthodox Lutheran theologian Martin Chemnitz, for a minute reading of the text, for his careful editorial work both in English and in Latin, and above all for his willingness to share expertise in fine points of Lutheran theology. I owe a similar debt to Dr. Richard Gamble of Westminster Theological Seminary and to Dr. Douglas Kelly of Reformed Theological Seminary, both of whom read the entire manuscript and made several important suggestions. Special thanks of another order go to Jan Gathright of Fuller Theological Seminary, whose expertise at the word processor made the task of organization and compilation of this dictionary not only feasible, but also smooth and virtually free of textual difficulties. Finally, I must express my gratitude to my family—to Gloria, my wife, and to Elizabeth and Karl, our two children—who looked on patiently and encouragingly as I wrote definition after definition on several thousand small file cards. I take responsibility, of course, for any errors or infelicities that remain, and I set the work aside knowing full well that many more definitions might have been included and that many of the discussions of terms might have been expanded.