About Commonplace

Built by a pastor, for pastors

I built Commonplace because I was frustrated. I kept finding myself in the middle of sermon prep knowing that Calvin, Owen, or Turretin had said something definitive on a passage but I couldn't find it fast enough to be useful. Searching PDFs and digitized books was slow, imprecise, and broken. I wanted to ask a question in plain English and get a sourced answer from the tradition.

Chase Davis

Pastor, The Well Church
Boulder, Colorado

Host, Full Proof Theology Podcast

M.Div., Th.M., Denver Seminary

Doctoral Studies, Historical Theology
Focus: Puritans & Anthropology
Vrije Universiteit

Cotton Mather Fellow, American Reformer

Contributing Scholar,
Center for Baptist Leadership

Author, Trinitarian Formation

Author, Offensive Christianity
Founders Press, 2026

I'm not a software company. I'm someone who reads these books and wanted a better way to work with them. Commonplace is the tool I wished existed.

The library

Commonplace draws from over 180+ works in the Reformed and Puritan tradition such as Calvin's complete commentary set, Owen, Turretin, Matthew Henry, Spurgeon, Charnock, Rutherford, Perkins, Flavel, Sibbes, Watson, Brooks, Baxter, and more. All works are public domain English editions or AI-assisted translations of Latin originals.

What makes Commonplace unusual is the Latin scholastics. Works by Keckermann, Althusius, Zanchi, Junius, Pictet, and Daneau — the architects of Reformed orthodoxy who have never been accessible in searchable English — are now in the library, translated and indexed alongside their English-language counterparts. No other tool offers this.

How sources are selected

Works are selected by importance and personal interest. If you'd like to see a work added, just email me below.

All English-language works are drawn from pre-1928 public domain editions sourced from Archive.org, Project Gutenberg, and PRDL.

On the AI translations

The Latin translations are AI-assisted, produced using Claude with Reformed theological vocabulary and context. They are working translations intended for research — not definitive scholarly editions (yet). Spot-checking against the authoritative Carney translation of Althusius shows the output is accurate at the level of stylistic word choice, not substantive mistranslation. But we are transparent: these are not human-verified renderings, and scholars should treat them accordingly.

We believe making these works searchable in an AI-assisted translation is more useful to the church than keeping them locked behind a language barrier.

On the AI synthesis

Commonplace does not generate theology. It retrieves and presents what the sources actually say. The AI reads the retrieved passages and organizes them for you. It does not add claims, invent citations, or fill gaps with speculation. If the sources don't address your question, it tells you so. Every result includes the source, author, work, and page number so you can verify it yourself.