Since 2014, Davenant Press has been publishing books to renew and build up the contemporary church. Our publications include modernizations and translations of historic texts, essay collections, and our Convivium proceedings, as well as original works.
God created the world for his glory alone. Most Christians would confess this claim, but struggle to explain it. How could God be all-sufficient in himself and yet gain anything from creating this cosmos? Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) provided a classic answer to this timeless question in his End for Which God Created the World, but most modern readers need a guide through this difficult text.
In this book, Joe Rigney points the way to an enriched understanding of Edwards’s classic and the sublime mysteries which it plumbs: that God has an end in creation; that God is eternally happy and self-sufficient in Himself; that God creates everything from nothing; and that God values things according to their value. Rigney’s work invites academics, pastors, and laypeople alike into conversation with one of the brightest lights of the Reformed tradition.
Davenant Guides seek to offer short and accessible introductions to key issues of current debate in theology and ethics, drawing on a magisterial Protestant perspective and defending its contemporary relevance today.
The Library of Early English Protestantism is an ongoing project that aims to make available in scholarly but accessible editions seminal writings from key but neglected 16th and 17th-century Church of England theologians.
Davenant Retrievals further our mission of recovering the riches of the Reformation by offering concise, collaborative expositions of a doctrinal topic key to the Protestant heritage and defending its relevance today.
Explore the collected works of the great but forgotten Italian Reformer, Peter Martyr Vermigli, ranging from his writings on philosophy and the Eucharist to our ongoing translation and republication of his
Loci Communes.
Convivium Proceedings gather together the best of the papers and addresses delivered by expert scholars at our annual National Convivium Irenicum at Davenant House in South Carolina.
Aside from our ongoing series, we regularly publish separate titles covering everything from literature to theology, philosophy,
and more.
If you are new to the work of Davenant, then our best-selling titles are a great place to start finding out about our mission and distinctives.
Volumes I-II
Over the past decade, the project of Protestant resourcement has exploded, giving pastors, scholars, and lay-people access to the great thinkers who shaped their tradition. Despite this great progress, many treasures of Reformed theology remain obscured from the lay-person, confined to academics with a working knowledge of Latin and Biblical languages–or, if translated, affordable only by libraries with large budgets.
Synopsis of a Purer Theology, otherwise known as “the Leiden Synopsis,” is one such work. Collecting theological disputations delivered at the University of Leiden in the early 1600s, it is one of the most historically important and theologically comprehensive handbooks of Reformed theology, being a key influence for many Reformed theologians including Herman Bavinck, Abraham Kuyper, Karl Barth, Louis Berkhof, and Richard Muller. And yet, it has remained largely forgotten and left to a handful of Latin-reading scholars.
Now for the first time, the Davenant Press has published this significant work in a full English-only translation, in an affordable and concise two-volume set that includes introductory material to orient the reader to the text.
The Synopsis offers both a snapshot of the state of confessional theology in the 17th-century Dutch Reformed tradition, and also an enduring example of how the project of systematizing doctrine can serve the church. The Leiden professors modeled thoroughness and clarity of thought in the face of confusion, and a vision of irenic Christian unity over brittle doctrinal uniformity.
As Protestants endeavor both to recover their forgotten heritage and to pass it down to the next generation, we need examples of how this has been done before us. The Synopsis of a Purer Theology will serve to bring such illumination and perspective to a generation desperately in need of its boldness, clarity, and wisdom.
If you are interested in a bulk order, we offer a 40% discount and $10 shipping for orders of 10+ books OR orders container 5+ copies of a single book. We also offer a 50% discount and free shipping for orders with a gross retail value over $500.
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