Lubbertus and Principia
Sibrandus Lubbertus [d. 1625] argues at the beginning of his treatise on the principles of Christian dogmatics that “all arts and all disciplines and sciences have identifiable principia from which solid arguments and precepts are deduced.” Just as arithmetic, geometry and physics have first principles, so does theology: there must be a “true, immediate, utterly necessary prior and knowable” principle that is the “cause of all doctrines in the Christian religion.”
Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 1: Prolegomena to Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 431