Knowledge of God in Calvin

After more than forty years, this comprehensive analysis of John Calvin's theology is still widely accepted and debated today. Displaying an intimate knowledge of Calvin's theological corpus and the work of contemporary interpreters, Edward Dowey, Jr., explains what knowledge of God means and how it functions in Calvin's thought. Dowey beings with a description of the general characteristics of the knowledge of God, then moves to a discussion of the significance of the duplex cognition Domini. The main body of the book examines Calvin's fundamental distinction between the knowledge of God the Creator and God the Redeemer, and the relation between this twofold knowledge. This third edition also includes a new sixth chapter that discusses the influence of the twofold knowledge on the larger structure of Calvin's theology. To the four appendices that interact with critical statements on Calvin's thought, including "The Barth-Brunner Controversy on Calvin" and "Köstlin's Criticism of Calvin's Predestination," Dowey has also added a significant review of William J. Bouwsma's book John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait. This review, the new preface, and the new chapter bring Dowey's enduring volume back into conversation with today's scholarly work and, as Heiko Oberman has said, "lend it a sharp edge of relevance for the foreseeable future."