I found them interesting. But then perhaps I ought to get our more.
- 'Archbishop William Whitgift whose distaste for Puritanism was legendary, remained a staunch Cavinist in his views on predestination, as the Lambeth Articles of 1595 amply demonstrate' (p.4).
- 'Calvin regarded Zwingli as a second-rate theologian and ridiculed the esteem in which he was held at Zurich. though Calvin read and cited Zwingli's important treatise, the Commentary on True and False Religion, he confessed that he was put off by Zwingli's reliance on philosophy, he excessive use of paradox, and his confusion of the universal concerns of the gospel with the parochial interests of the Swiss' (p.173)
- Calvin signed the Augsburg Confession while at the Regensburg Colloquy in 1541 (p. 172).
- Relying 'only upon the index of the Corpus Reformatorum as a guide to Calvin's knowledge of the Fathers, one would conclude that Calvin referred in his commentaries on the new Testament to Chrysostom 105 times, to Augustine 101, to Jerome 38, to Ambrose 23, and to Ambrosiaster not at all' (p. 135).
- 'Calvin does not use the Fathers in the way a medieval commentator used his ancient authorities. The Father's are not cited by Calvin in his exegesis of Romans 8 because he agrees with them and needs their authority their authority to strengthen his argument [...] in every case, explicit and anonymous, in which Calvin has referred to Patristic exegesis, he has quarreled with it. One ought not to make too much of this quarrel. After all, as we have already seen, there is a wide range of issues on which Calvin is in complete agreement with the Fathers. [...] Calvin, after all, is writing a commentary on Paul, not on Origen or chrysostom or Augustine or Ambrosiaster. Calvin keeps his pages as uncluttered as possible because it is Paul himself and not the commentators he wants to interpret' (p. 136)
All page references are to Calvin in Context by David Steinmetz.
