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The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition. By Richard A. Muller. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. xii + 308 pp. $65.00 (cloth).
In this collection of essays Richard Muller addresses a number of misreadings of Calvin that "accommodate" his thought to modern agendas. The broad thrust of Muller's argument is that in order to properly understand Calvin one must read all of Calvin's work-not just the Institutes-in its sixteenth-century context. He takes up this argument more specifically by analyzing the development of Calvin's Institutes in relationship to his overarching theological program. Muller begins by showing that Calvin establishes an agenda in his prefaces that requires that the Institutes be read in conjunction with his exegetical works as one side of an expository and dogmatic project. For the majority of the book Muller turns to a close examination of the structure of the sixteenth-century editions of the Institutes and its development over time. His analysis leads him to conclude that despite Calvin's harsh words for the scholastics (which Muller shows, on the basis of comparisons of Latin and French editions of the Institutes, to have been directed usually and specifically at the...