This volume presents collected essays from scholars around the world on various aspects of
Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706) theology philosophy and reception in the context of the
challenges of orthodoxy in his day. This book then locates Mastricht's ideas in the context
of the theological and philosophical currents of his day. The pre-Revolutionary status of
theology and philosophy in the wake of the Enlightenment had many of the same problems we see
in theology today as relating to the use and appropriation of classical theology in a
21st-century context. Ideas about the necessity of classical primary sources of Christianity in
sustaining Reformed theology are once again becoming important and Mastricht has many insights
in this area. The last thirty years have witnessed a remarkable revolution in the study of
Reformed Orthodoxy that broad movement of theological consolidation which took place in the
two centuries between the early breakthroughs of the Reformation and the reorganization of
intellectual disciplines within the university world heralded by the arrival of the various
intellectual and cultural developments known collectively as the Enlightenment. The old models
which tended to prioritize one or two figures in the Reformation. In place of this older
scholarship we now have a growing number of studies which seek to place Reformed thinkers of
the period in a much wider context. One of the results of this is that serious scholarly
attention is now being directed at figures who were previously neglected such as Petrus van
Mastricht a German-Dutch theologian who has emerged as significant voices in shaping the
Christianity of his day. He was the author of a major system of divinity. This work is in the
process of being translated into English (two volumes are available at the time of writing).
Mastricht is also the subject of a growing body of literature in English of which this volume
is a fine example. The essays contained in book work represent precisely the range of scholarly
interests that the new approach to Reformed Orthodoxy has come to embody. Dealing specifically
with the areas of theology philosophy and reception this book points toward three critical
areas of study.
