Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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Calvin’s theology is based upon a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures.
He was the ablest exegete among the Reformers, and his commentaries
rank among the very best of ancient and modern times. His theology,
therefore, is biblical rather than scholastic, and has all the freshness of
enthusiastic devotion to the truths of God’s Word. At the same time he
was a consummate logician and dialectician. He had a rare power of clear,
strong, convincing statement. He built up a body of doctrines which is
called after him, and which obtained symbolical authority through some of
the leading Reformed Confessions of Faith.
Calvinism is one of the great dogmatic systems of the Church. It is more
logical than Lutheranism and Arminianism, and as logical as Romanism.
And yet neither Calvinism nor Romanism is absolutely logical. Both are
happily illogical or inconsistent, at least in one crucial point: the former by
denying that God is the author of sin—which limits Divine sovereignty; the
latter by conceding that baptismal (i.e. regenerating or saving) grace is
found outside of the Roman Church—which breaks the claim of
exclusiveness. f360
The Calvinistic system is popularly (though not quite correctly) identified
with the Augustinian system, and shares its merit as a profound exposition
of the Pauline doctrines of sin and grace, but also its fundamental defect of
confining the saving grace of God and the atoning work of Christ to a
small circle of the elect, and ignoring the general love of God to all
mankind (John 3:16). It is a theology of Divine sovereignty rather than of
Divine love; and yet the love of God in Christ is the true key to his
character and works, and offers the only satisfactory solution of the dark
mystery of sin. Arminianism is a reaction against scholastic Calvinism, as
Rationalism is a more radical reaction against scholastic Lutheranism. f361
Calvin did not grow before the public, like Luther and Melanchthon, who
passed through many doctrinal changes and contradictions. He adhered to
the religious views of his youth unto the end of his life. f362 His Institutes
came like Minerva in full panoply out of the head of Jupiter. The book was
greatly enlarged and improved in form, but remained the same in substance
through the several editions (the last revision is that of 1559). It threw into
the shade the earlier Protestant theologies,—as Melanchthon’s Loci, and
Zwingli’s Commentary on the True and False Religion,—and it has hardly
been surpassed since. As a classical production of theological genius it
stands on a level with Origen’s De Principiis, Augustin’s De Civitate Dei,