Nielsen’s Nook

I have always found it fascinating how much Calvin interacted with St. Augustine; however, did you know that he interacted tremendously with the Early Church Fathers? What is even more fascinating to me is how many Reformed people these days have forgotten that they come from a long meandering church tradition that stems from the Roman Catholic tradition and is influenced significantly from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Luther simply wasn’t the first Christian. :-)

So let me share some statistics from Calvin’s work that I hope shows the girth of his interaction with the Fathers and other Saints of the Church:

• Name: (Commentaries # of references), (Institutes # of references)
• Irenaeus: (12), (12)
• Justin Martyr: (6), (1)
• Tertullian (35), (25)
• Origen (63), (2)
• Athanasius (3), (6)
• Gregory Nazianzen (1), (1)
• Bernard (5), (70)
• Augustine (275), (393)
• Ambrose (55), (51)
• Basil the Great (0), (1)
• Clement of Alexandria (2), (0)
• Clement of Rome (1), (0)
• Cyprian of Carthage (16), (50)
• Cyril of Jerusalem (2), (0)
• Pseudo-Dionysius¹ (1), (0)
• Eusebius (61), (4)
• Hilary (8), (11)
• Jerome (522), (37)
• Hipolytus (19), (0)
• Ignatius (1), (3)
• John Chrysostom (227), (56)

These are only a handful for which I had time to electronically search tonight. The numbers may be off a little because I did not have the time to read through every citation that my software showed as a hit. Nevertheless, I think this demonstrates that Calvin was very self-consciously standing on the shoulders of those who came before him, those with whom he agreed and those with whom he did not.

__________
¹ Pseudo-Dionysius was known to Calvin as Dionysius the Areopagite, referenced in his commentary on 2 Cor 12:1-5.