A Review of Campegius Vitringa, The Fundamentals of Sacred Theology, trans. Levi Bernston (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024). 246pp. Paperback. $12.75. 

The strength of scholastic theology lies in its precision. While theology should drive us toward knowing God and living for his glory, precision is both weighty and essential in treating fundamental issues like the Trinity, the two natures in Christ’s divine person, how God justifies sinners, in what sense faith saves (and does not save), and many other issues. Precision brings clarity and maturity to theological discussions, promoting clear and mature Christianity.  

In a time when theological lines are often blurred, lacking fine distinctions often fills the void with modern mistakes, like subordinating Christ to the Father in his divinity instead of his humanity, saying that he is an adopted son as well as a natural Son, blurring lines between imputed and infused righteousness, and assuming that faith saves rather than Christ. If we want to keep our heads clear respecting the gospel, and our hearts vibrant in relation to our response to the gospel, then we need to re-enter long-standing theological conversations to pick up discussions without derailing them. 

Dutch Reformed theologian Campegius Vitringa (1659-1722), student of the more famous Herman Witsius (1636-1708), was one of the last so-called Reformed scholastics, writing in the early Enlightenment period. Theologians tended to take varied, even opposing paths during this tumultuous period in history, some veering towards a mere Christianity based on natural revelation and reason alone, others conservatively clinging to classic scholastic theology, and still others pulling towards revival theology, pietism, or adapting older theology to new philosophical ideas. Vitringa exemplified the conservative wing of Reformed orthodoxy at the time, seeking to draw scholastic distinctions, expressions, and ideas into conversation with what we would recognize as a more modern world. Fundamentals of Sacred Theology includes 1000 theological propositions, which he later expanded into eight large volumes of explanatory material. He designed the “fundamentals,” or aphorisms, contained in this volume to be introductory to what students needed to know to study Christian doctrine more deeply, and he expected his students to memorize them. After outlining some interesting and helpful features of this text, this review will assess the book’s overarching content as well as the quality of the translation and editorial work. Though many of Vitringa’s propositions do not stand alone without exposition, they offer modern students a unique window into the kinds of distinctions needed to frame a robust, precise, detailed, and clear theological system. 

Vitringa presented a coherent, tightly reasoned system in twenty-five chapters.  

Particularly, this small work is a significant and robust summary of mature Reformed covenant theology, which suffuses most of his content. After laying a foundation in divine revelation as the way of knowing God, followed by the divine attributes and Trinity as depicting the God whom we come to know, he progresses through the standard topics of creation, the covenant of works, the fall, sin, and sin’s effects. His pervasive covenant theology includes here the eternal testament between the Father and the Son (ch. 13), often known as the covenant of redemption, serving as a bridge to the redemption of sinners in Christ. Respecting the enactment of this testament, he asserted that the Father should be “considered as the testator, the Son as the heir, and the elect being called by Christ with the highest of glory for being sanctified, ruled, and saved, as the inheritance” (p. 99). Without contradicting Hebrews 9:16-17 in which Christ is testator, purchasing an eternal inheritance through his death, Vitringa made the point that the covenant respecting our salvation originated with the Father, was purchased by the Son, and is applied by the Spirit, showing the inseparable operations of the entire Trinity in the work of redemption. Christ remains testator to us in that we receive the benefits of his last will and testament through his death, while the Father formally made the testament with the Son respecting our salvation. As in the writings of William Ames (and Peter van Mastricht), faith (ch. 14) comes as a hinge to the rest of the material because saving faith is necessary to receive and believe everything that follows concerning redemption accomplished and applied in Christ by the Spirit. In contrast to the eternal intra-Trinitarian testament, the covenant of grace is “an agreement between God and the sinner” (p. 109). Chapter 16 then traces the historical outworking of the covenant of grace up to Christ, Vitringa clearly maintaining that the Mosaic covenant was not “a repetition of the covenant of nature” or some kind of third mixed covenant, but the covenant of grace administered with greater “strictness” than its new covenant culmination (p. 124). Christ’s person and work follow, with a particularly rich section on the nature and extent of Christ’s sufferings (p. 158), leading to calling, regeneration, and repentance, justification, adoption (pp. 187-190), sanctification, and glorification (chs. 20-23).  

The order of the final chapters is curious at first glance because chapter 24 treats the sacraments first and chapter 25 the church. Often in Reformed systems, the doctrine of the church (ecclesiology) preceded the application of redemption, and the sacraments appeared in the context of both. However, Vitringa illustrates the flexibility of Reformed systematic theology by making the necessary logical connections for placing his doctrines where he did. On the whole, this full and concise introduction to Reformed doctrine will leave readers wanting to dive into his larger systematic explanations of each topic. 

While the sheer number of topics and useful insights in this work are too numerous to list, such as his envelopment of the medieval fourfold sense of Scripture into aspects of its single literal sense (p. 20), it is nonetheless surprising what he omitted at times. For instance, Vitringa bypassed some key questions such as Christ’s active and passive obedience and righteousness (except a passing reference on page 184), which he likely covered when explaining these sentences in his larger system of doctrine. He is also somewhat sparse on eschatology. Chapter 23 treats glorification and the beatific vision well, but it leaves out several standard eschatological topics that often found their way into classic Reformed prolegomena and other key parts of the system, such as the qualities of the resurrected body.  

Additionally, Vitringa is sometimes so brief that readers could miss his meaning. For instance, he asserted that “second justification” is not separable from the first (p. 186), countering Roman Catholic views of a first justification by baptism and a second by works at the Last Day. Yet he does not give readers enough information to know whether he taught a form of final justification at the final judgment, which some Reformed authors asserted as a final public declaration of our first justification. Putting every doctrine in its right place and connection is hard work, and no doctrinal system is perfect, just as no theologian is perfect, on this side of glory. Gleaning useful insights from this text, readers are simply reminded that one cannot get everything that they want or need from a single author or text. 

Regarding the translation and editing, the text reads well and the translator’s notes, especially his historical introduction, are very helpful. Sometimes the editor makes mistakes, such as asserting that “Many heretics have argued against” Christ’s “true and holy soul distinct from the divine nature” (p. 143) referred to Arianism, when the Apollinarians were in view. Similarly, on page 218 (fn 80) he states that the debate over the use of icons “reached its end” at the Second Council of Nicaea in AD 787. Yet the Eastern church did not formally adopt the decisions of this Council until AD 843 after iconoclasts and iconodules continued to vie for dominance. The debate partly respected whether the anti-images Council Hieria (AD 754) or the pro-images Nicaea II was the legitimate seventh ecumenical council. Details like the first are important to keep clarity in key Christological ideas, and the latter is important because it makes it clear that the gradual slide toward venerating images was neither clear cut nor inevitable. The editor also promises to fill in Scripture references in footnotes, but these are sparse in proportion to the actual biblical allusions in Vitringa’s text. However, the editor gifts non-Latin readers with access to an important and concise summary of Reformed doctrine that will be refreshing and eye-opening to a modern audience wanting to get a better grasp of classic Reformed ideas. 

Readers interested in classic Christian theology generally, and Reformed theology particularly, will find this little book helpful. It does not offer the kind of robust detail of a Francis Turretin or Peter van Mastricht, but Vitringa did not design it to do so. Taking it for what it is, a collection of 1000 sentences of basic theological propositions, it gives serious readers vital insight into the logical progression and interconnection of ideas in classic Reformed doctrine. Bernston thus provides a helpful guide to topics that are valuable in their own right while also helping students identify areas in which they may want to pursue deeper study through more comprehensive theological texts. It is a delightful read that, Lord willing, will promote better unity and maturity in Christian faith and life. Scholastic theology, and especially a summary like this one, does not give us everything we need to know about God or everything necessary to live faithfully before him. But it does furnish us with the necessary tools to go onward and upward along clearly marked paths.