Without exaggeration, the theological prolegomena of the seventeenth-century Protestant scholastics provide a model for the development of a distinctive Protestant but nonetheless universally Christian or catholic theology — a model that Protestant theology today can ignore only at great risk (Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1:109).

Briefly, the Protestant scholastics declare two principia theologiae, a principle or foundation of knowing (principium cognoscendi) and a principle or foundation of being (principium essendi). The former is Scripture, the self-revelation of God, and the latter is God himself, the self-existent ground of all finite existence. The first and foremost reason for the inclusion of any doctrine in such a system is the fact of its presence as a place or topic — a locus or topos — in the biblical revelation. Predestination receives considerable attention in the Pauline letters and, consequently, receives considerable attention in the Reformed system. Its presence in the system, moreover, rests on the foundation of the Augustinian tradition antecedent to the Reformation (1:126-127).