Tradition as a Defensive Tool

From the third or fourth decade of the sixteenth century onward, there was a development in Protestant approaches to the doctrine of the Trinity—on the one hand, the Reformers became more and more willing to accept the traditional terminology as normative, while, on the other, they distanced themselves from the increasingly loud, albeit never very large, chorus of antitrinitarianism. These two sides of the development were, of course, related.

 

Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 4: The Triunity of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 65.