THE PROVENANCE OF JOHN CALVIN'S EMPHASIS ON THE ...

Backus 998 and Anthony Lane. In a publication of a collection of his essays on Calvin as
a "student of the church fathers," Lane prepares a fresh essay entitled "Calvins' Use of
the Fathers: Eleven Theses." 999 Here he provides a judicious methodological guide for
reading Calvin's (apparent) reading of earlier ecclesial works. Lane's first thesis
provides an apt critique of Niesel and all who kept cadence with him in understanding
that, as one scholar put it, "Calvin found the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the bond of
our union with Christ in the Eucharist in a sermon Erasmus attributed to John
Chrysostom." 1000 As Lane declares, "Calvin's citations of the fathers are not to be
confused with modern footnotes and must not be used uncritically to establish
sources." 1001 Such a thesis, proclaimed by so careful a scholar as Lane, well-tempers
Niesel's claim that Calvin "discovered" in a sermon attributed to Chrysostom a solution
to the conundrum of the communication of the ascended Christ's body and blood in the
sacrament. Like his sixteenth century contemporaries, Calvin is not concerned with
citing sources, or properly attributing to another his or her intellectual property. Rather,
he is calling in witnesses for the defense. Accordingly, Lane's second thesis reads:
Calvijn (Amsterdam: Ton Bolland, 1983); L. K. Little, "Calvin's Appreciation of Gregory the Great,"
Harvard Theological Review 56, (1963), 145-57; Hughes Oliphant Old, The Patristic Roots of Reformed
Worship (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975); Jill Raitt, "Calvin's Use of Bernard of Clairvaux," Archiv
für Reformationsgeschichte 72 (1981), 98-121; J. M. J. Lange van Ravenswaaij, Augustinus totus noster.
Das Augustinverständnis bei Johannes Calvin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1990); Anette
Zillenbiller, Die Einheit der Katholischen Kerche: Calvins Cyprianrezeption in seinen ekklesiologischen
Schriften (Mainz: Philip von Zabern, 1993).
Chapter 4 above.
998 E.g., Backus, "Calvin and the Greek Fathers," in Continuity and Change.
999 Lane, Student of the Church Fathers, 1-14.
1000 McDonnell, John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist, 257, emphasis added. Again, see
1001 Lane, Student of the Church Fathers, 1, emphasis added.
308