Book Review

Methods/Theory

Richard A. Muller begins this extraordinary book by doing something modern scholars too seldom do: he puts John Calvin and his thought back into their sixteenth-century historical context. Equally important is Muller's understanding of the evolutionary nature of Calvin's thought, which began to take form especially in the years between 1537 and 1541. The author argues convincingly that Calvin's "doctrine" has been systematically distorted by nineteenth and twentieth-century scholars who have for the most part repeated without question the ideas of their predecessors. He argues that they have failed to take into account all of Calvin's writings or, worse, ordered the reformer's ideas in ways that would have made little sense in the sixteenth century. Scholarly assertions notwithstanding, Calvin's thought was not monolithic. As Muller points out clearly, "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" (p. 7). Muller sees Calvin fully within the context of medieval, humanist, and early reformed traditions and not as a man with unchanging or unchangeable views.

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Muller explores an oft-neglected part of Calvin's writings—prefaces—which definitively show continuities between his thought and that of earlier times. The prefaces also allow the reader to track the development of Calvin's thinking in response to events. Calvin's interest in John Chrysostom provided him with a path of "continuous exposition" but also, the reader might infer, one for continuous growth and understanding of scripture and its meanings for human relationship with the divine. Many of the reformer's writings were direct outgrowths of his preaching and teaching and were often intended for those who wanted a guidebook to carry about or upon which to meditate.

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