This first translation of Girolamo Zanchi‘s (1560–1590) Five Books on the Nature of God is a welcome addition to the study of the Reformed theology of God, particularly theology proper—the theology of who and what he is. Translator Patrick O’Banion proves himself well equipped for the task, showing facility with Hebrew, Greek, and Latin as well as providing access to modern scholarship on and translations of authors whom Zanchi quotes. O’Banion also provides a thorough outline of the text in an appendix, followed by a thorough bibliography and index. This is the first of five volumes in On the Nature of God, all of which O’Banion plans to translate. He has already published several translations of Zanchi, including Blessed Is the Man: Orations on Theological Education (Merchant Royal Press, 2025) and Commentary on the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (Merchant Royal Press, 2024).

Zanchi published his massive summa On the Nature of God in 1577, following the publication of his treatise on the triune essence of God (De Tribus Elohim) in 1572. Zanchi was a brilliant and learned theologian in the Reformed scholastic tradition. He taught at the University of Heidelberg from 1568 to 1576 and ended up at a Reformed academy in Neustadt-an-der-Haardt, where Frederick III’s son, John Casimir, ruled after the Lutheran Ludwig VI had dissolved the faculty of theology department in Heidelberg.

Before his discussion of the divine attributes, Zanchi includes a long preface to John Casimir. As O’Banion describes it, “The letter to Casimir takes up the major theme of God’s ongoing provision for the church. ‘How often,’ Zanchi wonders, ‘has she seemed like a little boat, foundering in the depths of the sea, only to emerge once more?” (9). God has promised to be with her to the end of the age, and yet there have been alternating periods of light and darkness, bondage and liberty, Zanchi notes. Providing many examples of these alterations from both sacred and secular history, he views them not as mere happenstance but as God’s carefully orchestrated means of testing and sanctifying the church. He highlights God’s providential hand at work behind and through everything the church endures. Rather than signs that God has failed to care for his church, “various misfortunes” indicate his fatherly discipline, and the efforts of “tyrants and heretics” work “toward her salvation, as our old man is put to death and as we die to the world, that we might long for heavenly life and, so, ultimately be made like Christ” (15; as quoted by the translator, xxiiii).

A preface to the reader follows the preface to Casimir. It adumbrates something fleshed out in the main body of the work, which is the appropriation of philosophy:

The primary burden of the brief letter to the reader, which follows the dedicatory letter to Casimir, is to defend the presence of “philosophy” in De natura Dei and its place alongside theology in general. Zanchi clearly sees philosophy as necessary for the endeavor upon which he is about to embark but also recognizes Paul’s warning against it in Colossians 2:8. This leads Zanchi to distinguish “true philosophy” from the “empty deceit” condemned by Paul. (xxxiv)

Appropriating philosophy is indeed necessary to the task of understanding who and what God is (xxxv).

Zanchi’s heavy interaction with philosophy leads Richard Muller to conclude that his method differs from that of other Reformed predecessors such as Bullinger and Calvin. Muller writes, “In [the Protestant scholastic method’s] positive use of philosophy and of traditional theological method, it stands in contrast to the thought of Calvin and Bullinger in the previous generation and, indeed, in its detail, even to the more traditional works of Musculus, Vermigli, and Hyperius” (Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics 3:103, as quoted on xxxvi).

While Zanchi’s scholastic method puts him at variance with Bullinger and Calvin, he does not produce medieval scholasticism or metaphysics but strives for biblical exegesis (xxxvi). God’s simplicity is important to Zanchi’s doctrine of God, as it was common to other Reformed orthodox writers (xxxviii); indeed, he expresses this in the first chapter: “Although God is a most simple essence in which clearly no compositeness or accidents exist, nevertheless, for our sake, so that we might better understand what He is like, He is accustomed to attribute many things to Himself, as if they were multiple qualities” (63). In his discussion of the divine attributes, Zanchi makes a “fundamental distinction with regard to the attributes as a whole . . . between those which are utterly incommunicable with creatures and those in which creatures can ‘participate’ in some way” (xxxviii). Additionally, Zanchi not only grounds the divine names and attributes in Scripture but also treats them as practical for Christian living (xxxix–xl). As O’Banion notes in the introduction, “He was doing theology in service to the church” (xxxvi).

Zanchi’s treatise on the divine names has three parts. The first, chapters 1–5, offers a general introduction by defining a divine name, distinguishing two “orders” and ten overlapping “classifications” of names, and explaining the “general use of all the divine names.” The second part, chapters 6–10, addresses a series of quaestiones concerning the divine names, especially creaturely predication of God and how the various names spoken of him accord with his simple essence. The final eight chapters examine the meaning and use of the principal names of God. Chapter 18 then considers “the name-attributes of Exodus 34:6–7, which the Lord declared as he passed by Moses. By moving from the principal names to a passage where names and attributes converge, this chapter provides a fitting bridge to the following four books” (xl–xli).

Zanchi begins his summa on the nature of God by investigating his names. He is not shy to display his learning, and he appropriates writings from Jewish rabbis (i.e., Moses Maimonides), Greek Orthodoxy (i.e., John the Damascene), Western fathers and medieval theologians (e.g., Augustine and Aquinas), and Greek philosophers (e.g., Aristotle). In his writing, broad education merges with passion for truth and zeal for the glory of God. The Renaissance recovery of the Hebrew Old Testament, which set aside the exclusive use of the Vulgate, brought the West into the discussion of the meaning of the names, which span much wider and are more specific than Deus and Dominus (xli). This is another way Zanchi moves beyond medieval scholasticism to the original sources—the very words inspired by God.

The Heidelberg theologian decided to start his discussion of the nature of God by discussing God’s names because “knowledge of the attributes is necessary. In order to explain their necessity, we must first discuss the divine names” (231).

Zanchi humbly acknowledged the limits of human wisdom to his or anyone else’s ability to “comprehend the incomprehensible one,” following John of Damascus. He also “agrees that God gives ‘abstract names’—like ‘just,’ ‘good,’ ‘and ‘[powerful]’—to signify His ‘attributes and essential properties,’ which ‘follow from’ His nature” (xlii). In disagreement with John of Damascus, however, Zanchi “suggests that some divine names (like ‘Jehovah’ or ‘I am’) function kataphatically to ‘denote or indicate the essence concerning which the rest of the names are predicated” (xlii). The “‘kataphic theology of Zanchi does not elevate human capacity and pride but celebrates the divine benevolence (Yi Wang, “Girolamo Zanchi and Divine Names” [PhD diss.,Theologische Universiteit Apeldoorn, 2026], 195 as quoted on xliii).’ In sum, the divine names communicate who God is and what He is to human beings for their salvation” (xliii).

Zanchi also appropriates Thomas Aquinas in several places. One concerns the analogy of language regarding God. He rejects univocal and equivocal systems, asserting that our knowledge of God is by analogy (xliii).

Hence, we ascend from creatures to loving and

glorifying God, since He is the first and highest Good, whence come all other goods. For why did God create all things good and beautiful? So that, through them, we might arrive at a knowledge of Him and understand how good, how beautiful, how sweet, how lovely He is on the basis of the good of the creature. And for this same reason, as all things were created good, so are they proclaimed to be good in the Scriptures. In what way are they made known? Analogically. Unto what end and use? Unto our salvation. So that, from this analogy we might be led unto (as has been said) knowledge, faith, love, and the invocation of God. Hence, this doctrine is more useful than appears at first blush. (140)

Because of Zanchi’s use of Thomas Aquinas, he has sometimes rashly been called a Calvinist Thomist. But as Thomas E. Bull has pointed out regarding Zanchi’s eclecticism, his “thought is thus not simply reflective of a lack of a sense of obligation with regard to any one intellectual school; rather it is indicative of a principled impulse towards the harmonization of all knowledge.”¹ He also showed admiration for the first-generation Reformers, writing,

All of these truly learned men should be admired and loved inasmuch as they’re altogether worthy of Christ’s church. And their books should be read diligently. Indeed, they should even be preferred over the works of many of the fathers. This is the case because, on many points (and, in fact, on the whole), they’ve interpreted the holy writings with greater skill than the fathers, according to the Holy Spirit’s intention, and shed light on Christian doctrine, having rescued it from darkness, summarized it with remarkable concision, and explained it with a truly beautiful method.”²

As a translator of works of Reformed scholasticism, I heartily recommend this new translation of Girolamo Zanchi’s Five Books on the Nature of God to readers. Those who read it will grow in the knowledge of God, which has as its end salvation in the triune God. The book is a fine piece of scholarship in Reformed scholasticism and a treasure trove of brilliant theology.

Notes

1. Thomas E. Bull, “Girolamo Zanchi’s (1516–1590) Doctrine of the Unity of the Church” (PhD diss., Moore Theological College, 2024), 20).
2. Girolamo Zanchi, Blessed Is the Man: Orations on Theological Education (Merchant Royal Press, 2025), 42–43.

©Casey Carmichael. All Rights Reserved.

Girolamo Zanchi, Five Books on the Nature of God, or On the Divine Attributes, vol. 1, trans. Patrick J. O’Banion (Merchant Royal Press, 2026).

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Post authored by:

• Casey Carmichael

  

  Casey Carmichael holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Geneva. He is the author of A Continental View: Johannes Cocceius’s Federal Theology of the Sabbath (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019). He is also the coeditor of the Classic Reformed Theology series, published by Reformation Heritage Books. He has translated various works from the Reformed tradition, including J. H. Heidegger’s Concise Marrow of Christian Theology and John Calvin’s Necessity of Reforming the Church.

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