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Chapter 3 explains, in depth, Martin Bucer’s doctrine of justification in his Romans Commentary of 1536. This chapter demonstrates how the Socratic dictum “To know the good is to do the good” is paradigmatic for Bucer’s soteriology, which illuminates the importance of his intellectualizing view of faith and its relation to works. Within this framework the previous attempt to describe his doctrine as double justification is shown as problematic. This chapter also explores Bucer’s epistemological, anthropological, and psychological perspectives.

Chapter 4 analyses Augustine’s Christology of Romans 8.3 as a reception of Origen’s exegesis of that text. The methodology for this argument is established by reviewing the debate over Augustine’s use of the term massa peccati as a reception from Ambrosiaster. Discounting Ambrose as the primary source of Augustine’s theology of Christ ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’, the chapter identifies parallels to Augustine’s treatment of the text in Origen’s homilies on Luke, exposition of Psalm 28, and commentary on Romans. This leads to the conclusion that the Christology Augustine uses to combat Pelagianism is in fact Origen’s, and functions as a subtextual apology for Origen from within his anti-Pelagian project. The chapter closes by suggesting that Augustine may have received an early draft translation of Origen’s Commentary on Romans from Simplicianus, or from a close circle of readers gathered around him at Milan.

Chapter Abstract: This chapter moves to the second phase of development in Calvin’s doctrine of baptismal efficacy by examining the writings from his first ministry stint in Geneva and his three years in Strasbourg (1536–41). These writings include his first catechism of 1537/1538, the second edition of the Institutes (1539), and his commentary on Romans (1540). During this period, Calvin took a major step forward by explicitly identifying a connection between the sign of baptism and that which it signifies. That notwithstanding, the paucity of instrumental terminology, the fairly even balance between positive and negative references to the sacraments as instruments, and the much heavier emphasis on baptism as a means of assurance than a means of salvation are much the same as we find them in the Institutes of 1536.

Having explored Lacan’s account of modernity, this chapter demonstrates how certain biblical and doctrinal themes in Thomas Aquinas’s theology introduce ‘a turbulent otherness’ into his quest for philosophical rationality. It considers these in the light of Lacan’s theory that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo introduces an ontological void into Western consciousness. It discusses law, transgression, covetousness, and violence in the Summa Theologiae and Thomas’s Commentary on Romans, pointing to a violent dualism in Thomas’s conflicted views of God as both loving and punitive, reasonable and arbitrary, and to ambiguities in his account of love of neighbour. It discusses Thomas’s representation of prime matter as ontological evil in relation to his idea of the demonic as moral evil, and it relates this to questions of materiality, damnation, and the threat of hell. It concludes with a discussion of Thomas’s justification for the killing of heretics.