"It Is Your Destiny"

From the Institute Of Reformed Theology

John Calvin, perhaps the greatest theologian of the Reformed tradition, did not see himself as creating a new "school" of theology. He saw himself, and other Reformed pastors, as carrying on the work of the apostles. Even his own work as a sixteenth-century reformer was, in his view, derived from that of Martin Luther, who he termed "most respected father." Calvin's magnum opus, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, was not a work in which he advanced all his own ideas about the Christian faith, but freely used the work of other theologians from all periods of church history in order to construct his own theological system. Reformed theology is, then, first and foremost a Christian Theology, not meant to cast away the ancient learning of the church, but to draw it close and renew appreciation and allegiance to it.

No one should assume that Calvin either began the Reformed Tradition or that Calvinist perspectives constitute the totality of Reformed thought. Remember that when Calvin stopped in Geneva in 1536 (having only recently come into the Reform himself), he was prevailed upon to stay by Guilliaume Farel. Farel was one of the founders of the Reform in Geneva, which happened the year before Calvin's arrival. In Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, took over the position of lead pastor for that city in 1531, 12 years after Huldrych Zwingli initiated the Reform in that city. When Calvin was banished from Geneva in 1538, he went to Strasbourg where he learned immense amounts from the leading pastor there, Martin Bucer. Bucer had fostered the Reformation of the city in 1523.

This says nothing of the Reformed tradition as thought and lived in Bern, Constance and Mülhausen, or in France, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, the British Isles or Italy. And, lest we forget, Calvin is not the only Reformed theologian: Zwingli (who died four years before Calvin joined the Reform), Bullinger, Wolfgang Capito, Zacharias Ursinus, Johannes Oecolampadius, Caspar Hedio, Martin Bucer, and Peter Martyr Vermigli all left theological and occasional writings and liturgies, and the list could go on. Calvin is sometimes made to be the exemplar of Reformed theology, but Reformed theology is, by no means, limited to him. So, rather than tracing Reformed theology to Calvin as the sole source, Reformed theology is better imagined as a river into which many sources flow and from which many streams originate.