Published in 1625 and composed by four professors at the University of Leiden—Johannes Polyander, Andreas Rivetus, Antonius Walaeus, and Anthonius Thysius—the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae was an influential textbook of Reformed Orthodoxy. The following is quoted from the introduction by R. T. te Velde to the bilingual edition of the work published by Brill (2015):
Reformed scholastic theology as presented in the Synopsis has a multifaceted character that is reflected in features of the text. It arises from an ecclesiastical background in the Reformed churches that were established in the Netherlands in the middle of the sixteenth century, and that had experienced a process of consolidation and conflict between 1570 and 1620. As the word "purer" in the title of the Synopsis points out, the authors position themselves explicitly in line with the orthodox Reformed teaching that had been articulated at the great Synod of Dort in 1618-1619. The newly appointed faculty at Leiden thought it important to display theological unity. For that reason the four professors mostly acted jointly, and so prevented the rise of disagreements within the theological faculty. From their decidedly Reformed perspective they defined their Christian doctrine in contrast with altenative or opposite views.
At the same time, the Synopsis should be understood as a properly academic handbook of theology. The Leiden professors entered the arena of academic theology, and gave an account of the substantial and methodological presuppositions of their position. Familiar with discussions and opinions of their own time, well-versed in literatures ranging from classical antiquity and the early church to medieval theology and the Reformation, they argued their views in a concise but pointed way with clarity, precision, and logical reasoning.
Both on the academic level and on the ecclesiastical level, the Synopsis responds to challenges coming from the immediate context of the early seventeenth century. One century after the Reformation began, the Catholic church still posed enormous intellectual and practical challenges to the emerging Reformed churches. Groups that were labeled as Anabaptists, Spiritualists, or Libertines, presented altenative modes of belief and behavior from an entirely different perspective that could not be ignored by the Reformed theologians in the Netherlands. . . .
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