Muller: Question of Central Dogma

One of the most important contributions of Muller's work is his devastating critique of the infamous 'central dogma' theory. This theory is often associated with those who see a massive break between the Protestant scholastics of the seventeenth century and the Reformers of the sixteenth century.

According to this school of thought, the post-Reformation represents a hardening and rationalization of the more biblically balanced teaching of the Reformation by placing predestination at the center of theology. Well, miller begs to differ.

He gives this hard hitting blow,

The attempt to describe Protestant scholasticism as the systematic development of central dogmas or controlling principles – predestination in the case of the Reformed, justification in the case of the Lutherans – was, at best, a theological reinterpretation of the Protestant scholastic systems based on the efforts of constructive theologians of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to rebuilt theological system in the wake of the Kantian critique of rational metaphysics…At worst, the central dogma theories are an abuse of history that cannot stand in the light of a careful reading of the sources (PRRD 1.125-126).

Ouch! For more, see my notes PRRD 1:123-132.