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Oxford Studies in Historical Theology
The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition
This book attempts to understand Calvin in his 16th-century context, with attention to continuities and discontinuities between his thought and that of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. Muller pays particular attention to the interplay between theological and philosophical themes common to Calvin and the medieval doctors, and to developments in rhetoric and method associated with humanism.
324 pages, Paperback
First published February 17, 2000
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About the author
Richard A. Muller
20 books43 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Richard A. Muller (PhD, Duke University) is P. J. Zondervan Professor of Historical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the author of numerous books, including The Unaccommodated Calvin and Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. He also edits the Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought series.
Richard A. Muller (PhD, Duke University) is P. J. Zondervan Professor of Historical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the author of numerous books, including The Unaccommodated Calvin and Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. He also edits the Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought series.
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August 13, 2016
One-word summary: Tough
Chapter One: An Approach to Calvin--On overcoming modern accomodations
Summary: this chapter is basically about how 'developments' in 20th century thought on Calvin has not taken seriously his context. Most come with an agenda they impose on the text, little take the time to understand the Calvin of the 16th century.
A number of works on Calvin and his Institutes have been written, yet little consensus exists. Is it a theological system or a theology of piety or a theology of rhetoric or a rhetoric of piety or a pastoral theology? Contemporary interpretive antithesis could be offered ad infinitum.
"Calvin, after all, did not think of himself as a dogmatician in the modern sense of the term: rather, like most of the other theologians of his time, he understood himself as a preacher and exegete, and he understood the primary work of his life as the exposition of Scripture. The Institutes is equaled in size by Calvin's sermons on Job and dwarfed by the sermons on Deuteronomy, as well as by the individual commentaries on Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Pentateuch" (5).
"...Calvin himself might well object to the notion of "Calvin's doctrine" of anything, inasmuch as the doctrines that Calvin held and taught were, in large part, not his own!" (7).
Muller lays the smack-down on guys, especially Reist on page 8.
Muller argues for strict historical and contextual approach to Calvin. Some object--won't that make impossible any significant understanding of Calvin's impact or potential impact on the theology of the 20th century? The historical task precedes the systematic and retains its integrity only through independence from the systematic. Also, contemporary theologians need to come to grips with the fact that Calvin may have no direct influence on the contemporary discussion. "In any case, the genuine usefulness of Calvin's thought to the present can be assessed only when his thought is rightly understood" (11).
"Calvin's theology must be read in its development in dialogue with the past and with his contemporaries" (13).
"The study of Calvin, in other words, must take into consideration developments in the analysis of scholasticism and humanism, in the study of the progress of rhetoric in the sixteenth century., and in the broader field of the history of biblical interpretation. This consideration, as implied earlier, must examine not only the influence but also the context and what has been called the theological or exegetical "conversation" in which Calvin was engaged..." (13)
"The sixteenth-century Calvin, the Calvin who was born Catholic, whose theology was learned primarily in and through his work as a commentator and Reformer, whose work evidences the impact of humanist philology and rhetoric, of patristic study, but also, both positively and negatively, of the categories of medieval scholastic thought, and whose conclusions, together with those of a group of contemporary Reformed and Lutheran thinkers, became the basis for much of later Protestant theology--this Calvin cannot easily be accomodated to the needs and desires of modern Barthians or Schleiermacherians...A reading of Calvin's thought in its sixteenth-century context, in other words, yields the picture of a theology at once intriguing and intractible to twentieth-century concerns" (14-5).
Chapter 2: Of Prefaces, "Arguments," and Letters to the Reader--Calvin's testimonies to his intention and method
Summary: Calvin's prefaces are analyzed in order to make refinements on how we understand how Calvin understood his theological project.
"Calvin's letter to Francis I reflects this fundamentally apologetic intention but also makes clear the basic, positive instructional purpose of the Institutes, a purpose that would increasingly dominate Calvin's approach to and recasting of the work" (26).
"We have here, in a nutshell, Calvin's theological method: the running exposition of the biblical text in commentary and sermon, coupled with the elicitation of theological loci from the text and the gathering of those loci together with the important dogmatic disputationes of Calvin's time into the form of a basic instruction or institutio in theology" (29).
One of Calvin's underlying interpretive principles was the direct speech of Scripture to the living church (36).
Chapter 3: Scholasticism in Calvin--a question of relation and disjunction
Summary: To say that Calvin reaction to scholasticism was exclusively negative does not make sense of all the evidence.
Scholasticism defined: "a dialectical method of the schools, historically rooted in the late patristic period, particularly in the thought of Augustine, and developed throughout the Middle Ages in the light of classical logic and rhetoric, constructed with a view to the authority of text and tradition, and devoted primarily to the exposition of Scripture and the theological topics that derive from it using the best available tools of exegesis, logic, and philosophy..." (42).
scholasticus can have both positive and negative connotations. Positively, it can refer to academic standards or academic method. Negatively, to mere academic theology that has no reference to faith and life (43).
"In short, Calvin's overtly negative reaction to the "scholastici" conveys only a small part of his relationship to medieval scholastic theology, its method, themes, and distinctions. Alongside the rejection, there is also appropriation, sometimes explicit, but often unacknowledged" (57).
When Calvin criticizes the scholastics, he probably has in mind the theologiens Sorboniques, the academics at the Sorbonne.
Chapter 4: In the Light of Orthodoxy--the "method and disposition" of Calvin's Insitutio from the perspective of Calvin's late-sixteenth-century editors
Summary: Do the later apparatus(es) added to the Institutes in later editions/versions help us understand the continuity of Calvin's successors in the early orthodox period as well as Calvin himself?
Chapter 5: Beyond the Abyss and the Labyrinth: an ordo recte docendi
Summary: "Ordo recte decendi" = right order of expression of teaching. In this chapter, Muller takes William Bousma (Portrait of Calvin, 1988) to task, big time. Bousma gave a picture of a deeply troubled Calvin, suspended in an "age of anxiety." Bousma principally used Calvin's occasional reference to "abyss" and "labyrinth" to base his argument. Muller argues that this is not actually substantiated by the evidence. If anything, the words point towards Calvin's desire to establish the right order of expression of this theology.
Muller argues contra-Bousma that "...it is Calvin's entire purpose in these warnings concerning the labyrinth or the abyss of the divine decree to emphasize not the dread and anxiety brought about by taking the wrong path but to point past problematic quests for assurance to the right way, to the right order of teaching" (89) i.e. ordo recte decendi
"Calvin certainly did experience the problem of the labyrinth, whether in the context of the spiritual or of the intellectual difficulties encountered by the academically trained and ecclesially committted Christian reformer...It is perhaps worth noting that the phrase "age of anxiety" can be applied to nearly any era in human history and that the typical response to various forms of confusion and disorder. . . is to establish a method that brings order out of chaos. And it may also be worth noting that Christian theology and spirtuality, whether scholastic or humanist, have traditionally found a significant paradigm for overcoming their own varied encounters with disorder and its religious analogue, sin, in the biblical revelation of the God whose first act is to bring cosmic order out of pre-cosmic chaos and whose ultimate act is to bring soteriological order out of harmartiological chaos" (91).
Some conclusions: (1) Calvin uses abyss and labyrinth comparatively infrequently. When juxtaposed with words like "way" "clarity" and "truth" and Calvin's interest in establishing an ordo recte decendi, abyss and labyrinth dont appear to be major motifs. (2) When Calvin does use abyss and labyrinth as indicators of problems, they are likely used to indicate dangers that his theology prevents. (3) moving beyond Institutes, Calvin does not really use abyss and labyrinth. (4) the several references to abyss and labyrinth never appear in pairs (95-97).
Bousma takes an aspect of Calvin's rhetoric out of the context of rhetoric and places it into context of exisential trauma (97)
Chapter 6: To elaborate on the Topics--the context and method of Calvin's Institutes
Summary: The present question in scholarship on Institutes is: to what extent are the Institutes a theological system?
The 1539 edition marks a crucial solidification of purpose and a significant alteration of direction. This edition was when the Institutes ceased to be a brief, catechetical work and became in the context of the sixteenth-century, a "system" of theology (102).
As McKee has argued, the biblical citations in the Institutes ought frequently to be understood as "cross-references" to the commentaries. When the biblical citations in the Institutes are not cross-references to Calvin's own commentaries, they probably should be viewed as references to the exegetical tradition and not as "proof-texts" in the sense of texts wrested out of their context in violation of the principles of biblical interpretation" (107).
The Institutes must not be read instead of the commentaries, but with them...if you want to ascertain the biblical basis of Calvin's topical discussions and disputations, you must read the commentaries. Arguably, that's what Calvin intended in his introductory characterization of the Institutes (108).
You cannot evaluate the Institutes as a full system of theology in the modern sense. You cannot assumed that Calvin's omission or inclusion of a given topic offers a perspective on what Calvin viewed as theologically legitimate. (115). For example, just because Calvin doesnt talk about natural theology, the divine essence and attributes does not mean he didnt think them worthwhile topics to pursue.
A complex way of approach to Calvin's thought--not so much via the Institutes or via the Institutes and the commentaries taken as a whole and compared topically AS via a historical and developmentally conditioned reading of the successive editions of the Institutes and of the changes made in them in the light of the commentaries and controversies that had intervened between the editions or that were in progress at the time that Calvin was also looking toward a new edition of the Institutes (115).
Calvin's exegetical conclusions are not universally or even usually original--they rise out of a venerable catholic tradition. Calvin studied exegetical works of contemporaries and the exegetical tradition of church fathers and medieval exegetes.
Chapter 7: Establishing the ordo docendi--the organization of Calvin's Institutes, 1536-1559
Summary: Muller examines the changes in different versions of the Institutes. What did Calvin mean in 1559 when he said he was never satisfied with the order of the work until the ordo now set forth? Calvin's Institutes is a blend of the credal model, the catechetical model, and the Pauline ordo.
Chapter 8:Fontes argumentorum and capita doctrinae: method and arguments in Calvin's construction of loci and disputationes
Summary: did not read this chapter
Chapter 9: Fides and Cognitio in relation to the problem of intellect and will in the theology of John Calvin
Summary: Muller takes to task R.T. Kendall's argument that Calvin's view is intellectualist. Calvin is close to the medievals. He is antispeculative and his soteriological interest in the doc of faith puts emphasis on the primacy of the will in the cognitive act.
"Calvin thus moves toward a soteriological rather than a purely metaphysical or philosophical voluntarism: the problem of salvation centers on the freedom of the will in its sinning and the inability of the freely sinful will to choose the good" (166-7).
"The evil will is abolished by grace in such a way that, without suffering even a momentary abridgement of its uncoerced willing, it may now will the good" (167).
"...Calvin does not intend to argue a purely cerebral meaning of faith when he identifies faith as cognitio (knowledge). Even so, Calvin speaks of a "sense of the divine" engraved not on the mind or brain but upon the heart. As Stuermann suggested, "heart" is frequently used by Calvin as a synonym for "soul" (i.e. animus), but particularly when juxtaposed with "mind" (mens), the term also refers to "the seat of the emotions" or "the whole range of human affections"... (168).
Calvin saw anthropological statements of heart, soul, mind, etc. in OT and NT to be offering much the same perspective in slightly different terminology (169).
"Calvin therefore balances the functions of intellect and will in his conception of faith, rather than argue either a purely intellectualist or a purely voluntarist definition: in other words, if faith is knowledge (cognitio), then this cognitio is not to be restrictively understood as a function of intellect" (170).
Faith is not a naked or frigid apprehension of Christ, but a lively an effective sense of his power that persuades the heart and is sealed on the heart (Commentary on 1 John 2:27)
faith is primarily and properly grounded in the intellect, but it remains also a voluntary act of love and trust in God (170).
"...we can conclude that Calvin's theology falls, in its basic attitude toward the problems of human knowing and willing in their relation to the temporal working out of salvation, into a voluntarist rather than an intellectualist pattern" (171).
Chapter 10: The Study of Calvin--contexts and directions
Summary:
Negatively, Muller has been trying to set aside several dogmatic (or antidogmatic) grids that have been placed over Calvin's text and his thought.
Positively, to set elements of Calvin's theology in context of the intellectual dialogues and debates within which he worked and a close study of his thought.
"Calvin, like Melanchthon, stood within the humanistic culture but drew so heavily on the exegetical and theological tradition that scholastic patterns of thought and exposition inevitably were reflected in and modified by the humanistic models of philology and rhetoric that he emulated" (175).
16th-century attacks on scholastics may refer to perceived abuses in the theology of Roman Catholic contemporaries more than earlier forms of scholastic theology.
Expository, verse-by-verse exposition of text, roots not so much in medieval preaching as in medieval scholastic practice of biblical exposition (176).
Calvin was not the most learned student of older scholastic theology, sometimes has misplaced criticism (176).
Attacks on scholasticism by Reformers often toward content, not toward method (176).
The phrase "system of theology" or "theological system" was not available to Calvin and his contemporaries. Anachronistic to read back into Calvin.
Muller calls Institutes a "formal theology" (180).
"In sum: the Institutes was not a theological system in the sense of Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith or Tillich's Systematic Theology, but it was surely a theological system in the sense not only of the many loci communes theologici of the sixteenth century but also in the sense, nearly the precise sense, of Peter Lombard's Sententiae in IV libris" (180).
Theological implications for Calvin against the Accomodators: First, not helpful to declare that Institutes are not a theological system. Second, don't place one literary form of Calvin over another (e.g. Institutes as more important than sermons).
"To know the whole Calvin one must read the whole Calvin, and then some!" (182).
Another implication, it is not the case that Calvin moved doc of predestination out of the doc of God and into a soteriological location in order to make a particular theological point concerning the meaning of the doctrine (183).
Conclusions:
1. Scholasticism and Humanism not hermetically sealed containers in which you can place people in 16th c.
2. Don't read Reformation against Middle Ages, but against background of specific ideas, docs, and individuals.
3. something about humanism
4. Calvin's theology cannot simply be read out of the Institutes. Cannot divorce Calvin's exegetical and expository efforts from his work of compiling the Institutes, and vice versa.
5. Institutes is incomplete source for analysis of any particular doctrine that Calvin taught
6. the 1539 edition of Institutes must become focus of investigation for Calvin's thought.
7. 1537-1541 were the crucial years of development in Calvin's theological career.
8. Must set all of Calvin's work in exegetical and theological tradition.
9. Calvin's theology must not be understood as a finished product, but theology in development.
10. Refrain from a tendency to absolutize docs unless they explicitly require you to do so.
11. cannot have direct access to Calvin's thought either through the standard modern translations or through modern critical editions.
12. attempts to identify "tensions" in Calvin's thought are usually anachronistic claims of inconsistencies or problems
13. must give close attention to Calvin's method
14. "A clever theologian can accomodate Calvin to nearly any agenda; a faithful theologian--and a good historian--will seek to listen to Calvin, not use him" (188).
Chapter One: An Approach to Calvin--On overcoming modern accomodations
Summary: this chapter is basically about how 'developments' in 20th century thought on Calvin has not taken seriously his context. Most come with an agenda they impose on the text, little take the time to understand the Calvin of the 16th century.
A number of works on Calvin and his Institutes have been written, yet little consensus exists. Is it a theological system or a theology of piety or a theology of rhetoric or a rhetoric of piety or a pastoral theology? Contemporary interpretive antithesis could be offered ad infinitum.
"Calvin, after all, did not think of himself as a dogmatician in the modern sense of the term: rather, like most of the other theologians of his time, he understood himself as a preacher and exegete, and he understood the primary work of his life as the exposition of Scripture. The Institutes is equaled in size by Calvin's sermons on Job and dwarfed by the sermons on Deuteronomy, as well as by the individual commentaries on Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Pentateuch" (5).
"...Calvin himself might well object to the notion of "Calvin's doctrine" of anything, inasmuch as the doctrines that Calvin held and taught were, in large part, not his own!" (7).
Muller lays the smack-down on guys, especially Reist on page 8.
Muller argues for strict historical and contextual approach to Calvin. Some object--won't that make impossible any significant understanding of Calvin's impact or potential impact on the theology of the 20th century? The historical task precedes the systematic and retains its integrity only through independence from the systematic. Also, contemporary theologians need to come to grips with the fact that Calvin may have no direct influence on the contemporary discussion. "In any case, the genuine usefulness of Calvin's thought to the present can be assessed only when his thought is rightly understood" (11).
"Calvin's theology must be read in its development in dialogue with the past and with his contemporaries" (13).
"The study of Calvin, in other words, must take into consideration developments in the analysis of scholasticism and humanism, in the study of the progress of rhetoric in the sixteenth century., and in the broader field of the history of biblical interpretation. This consideration, as implied earlier, must examine not only the influence but also the context and what has been called the theological or exegetical "conversation" in which Calvin was engaged..." (13)
"The sixteenth-century Calvin, the Calvin who was born Catholic, whose theology was learned primarily in and through his work as a commentator and Reformer, whose work evidences the impact of humanist philology and rhetoric, of patristic study, but also, both positively and negatively, of the categories of medieval scholastic thought, and whose conclusions, together with those of a group of contemporary Reformed and Lutheran thinkers, became the basis for much of later Protestant theology--this Calvin cannot easily be accomodated to the needs and desires of modern Barthians or Schleiermacherians...A reading of Calvin's thought in its sixteenth-century context, in other words, yields the picture of a theology at once intriguing and intractible to twentieth-century concerns" (14-5).
Chapter 2: Of Prefaces, "Arguments," and Letters to the Reader--Calvin's testimonies to his intention and method
Summary: Calvin's prefaces are analyzed in order to make refinements on how we understand how Calvin understood his theological project.
"Calvin's letter to Francis I reflects this fundamentally apologetic intention but also makes clear the basic, positive instructional purpose of the Institutes, a purpose that would increasingly dominate Calvin's approach to and recasting of the work" (26).
"We have here, in a nutshell, Calvin's theological method: the running exposition of the biblical text in commentary and sermon, coupled with the elicitation of theological loci from the text and the gathering of those loci together with the important dogmatic disputationes of Calvin's time into the form of a basic instruction or institutio in theology" (29).
One of Calvin's underlying interpretive principles was the direct speech of Scripture to the living church (36).
Chapter 3: Scholasticism in Calvin--a question of relation and disjunction
Summary: To say that Calvin reaction to scholasticism was exclusively negative does not make sense of all the evidence.
Scholasticism defined: "a dialectical method of the schools, historically rooted in the late patristic period, particularly in the thought of Augustine, and developed throughout the Middle Ages in the light of classical logic and rhetoric, constructed with a view to the authority of text and tradition, and devoted primarily to the exposition of Scripture and the theological topics that derive from it using the best available tools of exegesis, logic, and philosophy..." (42).
scholasticus can have both positive and negative connotations. Positively, it can refer to academic standards or academic method. Negatively, to mere academic theology that has no reference to faith and life (43).
"In short, Calvin's overtly negative reaction to the "scholastici" conveys only a small part of his relationship to medieval scholastic theology, its method, themes, and distinctions. Alongside the rejection, there is also appropriation, sometimes explicit, but often unacknowledged" (57).
When Calvin criticizes the scholastics, he probably has in mind the theologiens Sorboniques, the academics at the Sorbonne.
Chapter 4: In the Light of Orthodoxy--the "method and disposition" of Calvin's Insitutio from the perspective of Calvin's late-sixteenth-century editors
Summary: Do the later apparatus(es) added to the Institutes in later editions/versions help us understand the continuity of Calvin's successors in the early orthodox period as well as Calvin himself?
Chapter 5: Beyond the Abyss and the Labyrinth: an ordo recte docendi
Summary: "Ordo recte decendi" = right order of expression of teaching. In this chapter, Muller takes William Bousma (Portrait of Calvin, 1988) to task, big time. Bousma gave a picture of a deeply troubled Calvin, suspended in an "age of anxiety." Bousma principally used Calvin's occasional reference to "abyss" and "labyrinth" to base his argument. Muller argues that this is not actually substantiated by the evidence. If anything, the words point towards Calvin's desire to establish the right order of expression of this theology.
Muller argues contra-Bousma that "...it is Calvin's entire purpose in these warnings concerning the labyrinth or the abyss of the divine decree to emphasize not the dread and anxiety brought about by taking the wrong path but to point past problematic quests for assurance to the right way, to the right order of teaching" (89) i.e. ordo recte decendi
"Calvin certainly did experience the problem of the labyrinth, whether in the context of the spiritual or of the intellectual difficulties encountered by the academically trained and ecclesially committted Christian reformer...It is perhaps worth noting that the phrase "age of anxiety" can be applied to nearly any era in human history and that the typical response to various forms of confusion and disorder. . . is to establish a method that brings order out of chaos. And it may also be worth noting that Christian theology and spirtuality, whether scholastic or humanist, have traditionally found a significant paradigm for overcoming their own varied encounters with disorder and its religious analogue, sin, in the biblical revelation of the God whose first act is to bring cosmic order out of pre-cosmic chaos and whose ultimate act is to bring soteriological order out of harmartiological chaos" (91).
Some conclusions: (1) Calvin uses abyss and labyrinth comparatively infrequently. When juxtaposed with words like "way" "clarity" and "truth" and Calvin's interest in establishing an ordo recte decendi, abyss and labyrinth dont appear to be major motifs. (2) When Calvin does use abyss and labyrinth as indicators of problems, they are likely used to indicate dangers that his theology prevents. (3) moving beyond Institutes, Calvin does not really use abyss and labyrinth. (4) the several references to abyss and labyrinth never appear in pairs (95-97).
Bousma takes an aspect of Calvin's rhetoric out of the context of rhetoric and places it into context of exisential trauma (97)
Chapter 6: To elaborate on the Topics--the context and method of Calvin's Institutes
Summary: The present question in scholarship on Institutes is: to what extent are the Institutes a theological system?
The 1539 edition marks a crucial solidification of purpose and a significant alteration of direction. This edition was when the Institutes ceased to be a brief, catechetical work and became in the context of the sixteenth-century, a "system" of theology (102).
As McKee has argued, the biblical citations in the Institutes ought frequently to be understood as "cross-references" to the commentaries. When the biblical citations in the Institutes are not cross-references to Calvin's own commentaries, they probably should be viewed as references to the exegetical tradition and not as "proof-texts" in the sense of texts wrested out of their context in violation of the principles of biblical interpretation" (107).
The Institutes must not be read instead of the commentaries, but with them...if you want to ascertain the biblical basis of Calvin's topical discussions and disputations, you must read the commentaries. Arguably, that's what Calvin intended in his introductory characterization of the Institutes (108).
You cannot evaluate the Institutes as a full system of theology in the modern sense. You cannot assumed that Calvin's omission or inclusion of a given topic offers a perspective on what Calvin viewed as theologically legitimate. (115). For example, just because Calvin doesnt talk about natural theology, the divine essence and attributes does not mean he didnt think them worthwhile topics to pursue.
A complex way of approach to Calvin's thought--not so much via the Institutes or via the Institutes and the commentaries taken as a whole and compared topically AS via a historical and developmentally conditioned reading of the successive editions of the Institutes and of the changes made in them in the light of the commentaries and controversies that had intervened between the editions or that were in progress at the time that Calvin was also looking toward a new edition of the Institutes (115).
Calvin's exegetical conclusions are not universally or even usually original--they rise out of a venerable catholic tradition. Calvin studied exegetical works of contemporaries and the exegetical tradition of church fathers and medieval exegetes.
Chapter 7: Establishing the ordo docendi--the organization of Calvin's Institutes, 1536-1559
Summary: Muller examines the changes in different versions of the Institutes. What did Calvin mean in 1559 when he said he was never satisfied with the order of the work until the ordo now set forth? Calvin's Institutes is a blend of the credal model, the catechetical model, and the Pauline ordo.
Chapter 8:Fontes argumentorum and capita doctrinae: method and arguments in Calvin's construction of loci and disputationes
Summary: did not read this chapter
Chapter 9: Fides and Cognitio in relation to the problem of intellect and will in the theology of John Calvin
Summary: Muller takes to task R.T. Kendall's argument that Calvin's view is intellectualist. Calvin is close to the medievals. He is antispeculative and his soteriological interest in the doc of faith puts emphasis on the primacy of the will in the cognitive act.
"Calvin thus moves toward a soteriological rather than a purely metaphysical or philosophical voluntarism: the problem of salvation centers on the freedom of the will in its sinning and the inability of the freely sinful will to choose the good" (166-7).
"The evil will is abolished by grace in such a way that, without suffering even a momentary abridgement of its uncoerced willing, it may now will the good" (167).
"...Calvin does not intend to argue a purely cerebral meaning of faith when he identifies faith as cognitio (knowledge). Even so, Calvin speaks of a "sense of the divine" engraved not on the mind or brain but upon the heart. As Stuermann suggested, "heart" is frequently used by Calvin as a synonym for "soul" (i.e. animus), but particularly when juxtaposed with "mind" (mens), the term also refers to "the seat of the emotions" or "the whole range of human affections"... (168).
Calvin saw anthropological statements of heart, soul, mind, etc. in OT and NT to be offering much the same perspective in slightly different terminology (169).
"Calvin therefore balances the functions of intellect and will in his conception of faith, rather than argue either a purely intellectualist or a purely voluntarist definition: in other words, if faith is knowledge (cognitio), then this cognitio is not to be restrictively understood as a function of intellect" (170).
Faith is not a naked or frigid apprehension of Christ, but a lively an effective sense of his power that persuades the heart and is sealed on the heart (Commentary on 1 John 2:27)
faith is primarily and properly grounded in the intellect, but it remains also a voluntary act of love and trust in God (170).
"...we can conclude that Calvin's theology falls, in its basic attitude toward the problems of human knowing and willing in their relation to the temporal working out of salvation, into a voluntarist rather than an intellectualist pattern" (171).
Chapter 10: The Study of Calvin--contexts and directions
Summary:
Negatively, Muller has been trying to set aside several dogmatic (or antidogmatic) grids that have been placed over Calvin's text and his thought.
Positively, to set elements of Calvin's theology in context of the intellectual dialogues and debates within which he worked and a close study of his thought.
"Calvin, like Melanchthon, stood within the humanistic culture but drew so heavily on the exegetical and theological tradition that scholastic patterns of thought and exposition inevitably were reflected in and modified by the humanistic models of philology and rhetoric that he emulated" (175).
16th-century attacks on scholastics may refer to perceived abuses in the theology of Roman Catholic contemporaries more than earlier forms of scholastic theology.
Expository, verse-by-verse exposition of text, roots not so much in medieval preaching as in medieval scholastic practice of biblical exposition (176).
Calvin was not the most learned student of older scholastic theology, sometimes has misplaced criticism (176).
Attacks on scholasticism by Reformers often toward content, not toward method (176).
The phrase "system of theology" or "theological system" was not available to Calvin and his contemporaries. Anachronistic to read back into Calvin.
Muller calls Institutes a "formal theology" (180).
"In sum: the Institutes was not a theological system in the sense of Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith or Tillich's Systematic Theology, but it was surely a theological system in the sense not only of the many loci communes theologici of the sixteenth century but also in the sense, nearly the precise sense, of Peter Lombard's Sententiae in IV libris" (180).
Theological implications for Calvin against the Accomodators: First, not helpful to declare that Institutes are not a theological system. Second, don't place one literary form of Calvin over another (e.g. Institutes as more important than sermons).
"To know the whole Calvin one must read the whole Calvin, and then some!" (182).
Another implication, it is not the case that Calvin moved doc of predestination out of the doc of God and into a soteriological location in order to make a particular theological point concerning the meaning of the doctrine (183).
Conclusions:
1. Scholasticism and Humanism not hermetically sealed containers in which you can place people in 16th c.
2. Don't read Reformation against Middle Ages, but against background of specific ideas, docs, and individuals.
3. something about humanism
4. Calvin's theology cannot simply be read out of the Institutes. Cannot divorce Calvin's exegetical and expository efforts from his work of compiling the Institutes, and vice versa.
5. Institutes is incomplete source for analysis of any particular doctrine that Calvin taught
6. the 1539 edition of Institutes must become focus of investigation for Calvin's thought.
7. 1537-1541 were the crucial years of development in Calvin's theological career.
8. Must set all of Calvin's work in exegetical and theological tradition.
9. Calvin's theology must not be understood as a finished product, but theology in development.
10. Refrain from a tendency to absolutize docs unless they explicitly require you to do so.
11. cannot have direct access to Calvin's thought either through the standard modern translations or through modern critical editions.
12. attempts to identify "tensions" in Calvin's thought are usually anachronistic claims of inconsistencies or problems
13. must give close attention to Calvin's method
14. "A clever theologian can accomodate Calvin to nearly any agenda; a faithful theologian--and a good historian--will seek to listen to Calvin, not use him" (188).
January 2, 2011
A collection of chapter studies on major themes in Calvin scholarship. Muller's argument is that Calvin has been misunderstood because he's been read in light of neo-orthodox contexts of theological issues, or in light of false disjunctions between humanism and scholasticism. The book destroys Bouwsma's psychoanalytic portrait of Calvin, shows how Calvin's Institutes follows a systematic order, but one in the sixteenth century vein, rather than in the later vein of post-reformation dogmatics. The gem of Muller's study is his attention to the different editions of the Institutes in French and Latin over the course of Calvin's career.
April 8, 2025
Not only is this an invaluable read for anyone who wants to seriously read and learn about the theology of John Calvin, but it is also an incredible case study in robust historical theology. Muller leads by example for how one ought to approach theologians of the past by taking not only contextual factors into serious consideration, but also elements of reception and interpretation. For Calvin, one must inquire into how he received the theological, pedagogical, and homiletical traditions that preceded him, and also how later figures of the Reformation and post-Reformation received Calvin and his thought. Calvin also must not be reduced to his Institutes; “to know the whole Calvin one must read the whole Calvin, and then some!” (182). In doing so, one must balance Calvin’s sermons, commentaries, and the Institutes, taking into account Calvin’s distinct methods and goals for each genre. Muller does this and more in this incredibly helpful volume.
March 27, 2024
I picked this book up thinking it would address more of Calvin’s doctrine. This book is much more of a technical guide for responsible Calvin research. Muller emphasizes the need to situate Calvin’s works within his 16th century context. While this was not exactly what I expected, it was helpful as I begin to work on a paper centered on Calvin.
August 4, 2017
You want tedious, painstaking refutations of things people do wrong with Calvin? Muller. He is astonishingly engrossed in the detail.
February 29, 2024
A wonderful introduction to Calvin's thought specifically through an exploration of his intended theological project.
July 22, 2014
Dr. Muller completely redefines how Calvin should be viewed. He makes clear that Calvin 1) was not the only founder of the Reformed tradition 2) wrote to a 16th century audience, not to 21st century, post neo-Orthodox critics, and 3) that the Institutes of the Christian Religion was not and should not be the sole source for critiquing the Reformed tradition. Calvin was, first and foremost and exegete. His theology grows out of his exegesis, not vice versa. Accordingly, if one is to critique his theology, his commentaries need to be considered as well as the Institutes. This is an excellent work and IMO should be considered before one begins to study Reformed theology. This is the best work since Francois Wendel's work on Calvin
April 4, 2013
Very clear, contextualized outline of some major themes in the Institutes. Also offers a very useful critique of previous theologically-inclined historiography, mainly Bouwsma's work. Four star rating because the explanations could have been simplified a bit by avoiding very very lengthy phrases.
September 17, 2010
Good. Helpful in thinking through the structure of Calvin's various instantiations of his "Institutes."
September 30, 2013
Sets the standard for how to do historical theology. An indispensable work for anyone seeking to do a thoughtful exploration of Calvin's thought, especially as it is captures in The Institutes.
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