The Slow Boat to Unilateralism
In response to Malcolm Chalmers’ article in the December 2013 edition of the RUSI Journal, Julian Lewis MP argues that abandoning continuous at-sea deterrence is a step too far down the ‘nuclear ladder’.
Towards the UK's Nuclear Century
In 2007, the UK Parliament began the process of developing a successor to the country's Trident-armed fleet of Vanguard-class submarines, which would allow the UK to maintain an unbroken deterrent patrol beyond the 100th anniversary of its becoming a nuclear-weapons state. At the insistence of the Liberal Democrat Party, however, the Cabinet Office has conducted a review of alternatives to this programme. Malcolm Chalmers explores the financial, strategic and technical issues raised by the review and analyses the vulnerabilities that the programme faces. He suggests that the UK remains committed to maintaining a nuclear deterrent with global reach, capable of confronting large as well as small nuclear powers into the indefinite future.
Italian Influence on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism
THIS ARTICLE TRIES to show that the rise of Calvinist scholasticism, which was the most important development in Calvinist theology during the second half of the sixteenth century, stemmed largely from several converging Italian influences, particularly from the writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi. Here Calvinist theology refers not only to the personal thought of John Calvin but also to the teachings of the founders of the Reformed or Calvinist tradition as it spread out from Geneva and Switzerland to France, Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, and the Low Countries. In this context Calvin emerges as the brightest star in a galaxy of Reformed theologians which includes Heinrich Bullinger, Pierre Viret, Theodore Beza and Wolfgang Musculus as well as Martyr, Zanchi and others. These theologians were often more influential than Calvin himself at a given place or time or on a given point of doctrine. Bullinger, Martyr, and Martin Bucer were all more important for spreading Calvinist ideas to Edwardian England than was John Calvin. Early Elizabethan Protestantism looked more to Zurich than to Geneva, as did early Polish Calvinism. German Calvinism owed more to Heidelberg than to Geneva.' These leaders developed their theologies sometimes in mutual dependence, sometimes with surprising independence. By no means was their relation to Calvin simply that of disciple to master, for each gave a personal nuance to his style of Calvinism. Thus the sixteenth century Jesuit Cornelius Schulting states on the opening page of his five volume polemic against Calvin and Peter Martyr that Martyr was clearer and far more learned than Calvin.2 Recently John Bray has pointed out that research in seventeenth century Calvinism leads "to the conclusion that the impact of Calvin upon the Calvinistic movement has been greatly over-rated. It may well be that some of