CALVIN

and the

BIBLICAL LANGUAGES

John D. Currid

mentor

To all my Hebrew Students

Copyright © John D. Currid 2006

ISBN 1-84550-212-4

ISBN 978-1-84550-212-6

Published in 2006 by

Christian Focus Publications, Geanies House,

Fearn, Ross-shire, IV20 1TW, Scotland.

www.christianfocus.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or a license permitting restricted copying. In the U.K. such licenses are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.

Contents

A Brief Time-Line of John Calvin’s Life

Chapter One

The Christian Hercules

Chapter Two

The Exegetical Preacher

Chapter Three

King of Commentators

Chapter Four

This Most Faithful Interpreter

Chapter Five

The Academy

Chapter Six

That Singular Instrument of God

Postscript

A Plea

Appendix

A Sermon of John Calvin on Deuteronomy 16:1–4

A Brief Time-Line of John Calvin’s Life

1509 Born in Noyon, France (July 10)

1523–1527 Student at College de Montaigu, Paris

1528–1533 Law Studies at Orléans and Bourges

Intermittent Study in Paris

1534 Year of Wandering

1535–1536 Calvin in Basel

1536 Institutes of the Christian Religion Published

1536–1538 First Stay in Geneva

1538 Calvin and Farel Expelled from Geneva

1538–1541 Calvin in Strassburg

Romans Commentary Published (1540) Calvin Marries Idelette de Bure (1540)

1541 Returns to Geneva

Ecclesiastical Ordinances Approved in Geneva

1549 Calvin’s Wife Idelette de Bure Dies

1553 Trial and Execution of Michael Servetus in

Geneva

1559 Establishment of the Geneva Academy

1564 Calvin Dies (May 27)

Chapter One

The Christian Hercules

The realia

Theodore Beza once commented regarding John Calvin that he ‘was a kind of Christian Hercules who subdued many ministers by the mightiest of all clubs, the Word of God. As many adversaries as Satan stirred up against him, so many trophies did the Lord bestow upon his servant.’1 Numerous works have appeared over the years treating John Calvin’s use of this ‘club’, that is, his hermeneutics or exegetical principles.2 To put it simply, Calvin desired to get at the real meaning (the realia) of the biblical text. Hunter puts it this way: ‘fidelity to the meaning of the original was his first principle.’3

Prior to the Reformation, this principle of determining the original meaning of a text as the basis of interpretation (known today as grammatical-historical exegesis) was not common.4 Although elements of it were found in movements like the Antiochene School, which includes such scholars as Theodore of Mopsuestia (350–428; he was called ‘the Exegete’) and John Chrysostom (344–407), the reality is that it was a rare hermeneutical position.5 The clearly dominant position before the Reformation was allegory. During the Patristic period, the Alexandrian School held interpretive sway in the church of the day, ...