Joshua Benjamins is a 2015 graduate. Courtesy | Joshua Benjamin, LinkedIn

Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics Joshua Benjamins ’15 released a new 185-page translation of three of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s “Loci Communes” on Aug. 29. 

“To craft a rendering that is faithful to the author’s intention and grammar, while also being readily comprehensible and aesthetically pleasing, requires an inventive art, and every sentence poses its own unique challenges,” Benjamins wrote in an email. “To translate is to make a never-ending and never-easy series of tradeoffs. In the end, hopefully, it yields a product that is a pleasing whole in its own right, though not a slavish calque of the original.”

Benjamins translated three of the Loci on providence and the cause of sin as a volume for the Davanant Institute’s ongoing project to translate the complete works of Vermigli, who was a commentator, Hebrew scholar, and Reformed theologian. The “Loci Communes,” which is Latin for “Common Places,” is Vermigli’s most popular work, according to Benjamins. 

“What it is is a systematic compendium of his theological thinking, compiled from extracts of his Biblical commentaries,” Benjamins said. “The ‘Loci Communes’ is braided together from these individual loci in his biblical commentaries.”

The Loci Communes was originally compiled about 14 years after Vermigli’s death in 1562 by a French pastor in London, according to Benjamins. Benjamins said that it was not written as a systematic theology and is instead a collection of digressions on theology which arose in the course of interpreting the Bible. 

It’s a compilation of scholia on theological topics as they arise in the course of exegeting Scripture,” Benjamins said. “And I think it’s important to remember that all of these theological reflections originated in an exegetical context.”

Benjamins said Vermigli is an author well worth reading as one of the theological giants of the 16th century and as a great synthesizing figure. 

“He is intimately familiar with Aristotelian logic and metaphysics as well as later scholastic authors, but he’s also a humanist genius who is as conversant with the Hebrew language and rabbinic tradition as anyone in his age and knows the church fathers extraordinarily well,” Benjamins said. “So his thought is the confluence of many strands of influence and I think that makes him an interesting figure and well worth reading for anyone interested in the history of philosophy and theology and simply western thought more broadly.”

Benjamins, who first began serious academic engagement with translating Vermigli in his 2015 Hillsdale history thesis on Vermigli’s Eucharistic theology, said he finished translating the substance of the book between April and August of last year. 

“Since then I’ve been revising my translation and digging up all of the ancient patristic and medieval citations, which turned out to be as much work, probably, as completing the translation itself because Vermigli is incredibly erudite and cites a wide range of sources and often does so imprecisely,” Benjamins said.

Assistant Professor of English Patrick Timmis said the Davenant Institute is attempting to provide a serious resourcing of 16th and 17th century Protestant theology for the contemporary church. 

“It goes out and finds people like Dr. Benjamins who are very accomplished scholars and very good at what they do and then asks, ‘OK, take Vermigli and produce a translation that’s going to be accessible to pastors and lay Christians,’” Timmis said. “And so it is straddling what can be a very wide divide between the church and the academy and a more public readership.”

According to Timmis, 16th and 17th century Protestant theologians and thinkers like Vermigli can provide carefully considered engagement with questions facing the contemporary church and its role in society.

“When you look at people like Vermigli or Richard Hooker or Martin Luther or John Calvin or some of these other figures, they do have a robust engagement with ‘How then shall we live, what is a Protestant church going to have to say about how Christians live in the world?’” Timmis said. “And you know, the answers to that are often surprisingly catholic in the small ‘c’ sense, deeply engaged with the fathers, deeply engaged with Aristotle, deeply engaged with Aquinas.”

Associate Professor of Classics Carl Young said Benjamins is an extremely productive scholar with several forthcoming publications. 

“Dr. Benjamins is one of the workhorses in the department,” Young said in an email. “I can count on him to teach any course that we offer and to do it well.”

Benjamins said he hopes to contribute further volumes to the Davenant Institute’s translation project. 

“In particular, I’d like to translate the chapters in the fourth part of the ‘Loci Communes’ that deal with issues pertaining to politics and political ethics, because Vermigli winds up being one of the more influential thinkers of the Protestant Reformation in the sphere of political reflection,” Benjamins said.