Calvin and classical influences

This is an excerpt from an introduction to a volume of passages from Calvin's Bible commentaries. It just shows how much classical influences played a part in Reformation understanding and how they are a part of the necessary education of a person who eventually gets a real understanding of the Bible and biblical doctrine.

Calvin’s refusal to be diverted from his main purpose is clear also in his use of classical and early Christian literature. The list of classical references is a long one. Cicero appears most often (sixteen times in the Pentateuch Harmony alone); but there are quotations from all the better-known Latin authors (Horace, Juvenal, Seneca, Terence, Cato, Quintilian, Virgil, Plautus, Suetonius, Tacitus, Livy, Pliny), and from the Greek authors (Homer, Euripides, Xenophon, Ovid, Aristophanes, Epicurus, Plutarch, and Aesop). He quotes Plato and Aristotle with respect. He admires Plato’s wisdom and piety, but objects to the “angelology” of Platonism (2 Peter 1:4, Col. 2:18, etc.). He quotes Aristotle on the distinction between anger and hatred (from “The Second Book on Rhetoric”), and refers with approval to his saying that the tongue should be an image of the understanding (Gal. 5:19, 1 Cor. 14:11). In the field of law, he speaks of Portius’ law, Flavian law, the laws of Sempronius, and Valerius’ law (Acts 16:35, 22:25, 1 Tim. 1:10). Herodotus, Pliny, Gellius, Homer all contributed a discussion of the giant Og in Deut. 3:4. It is not always possible to tell whether Calvin is depending on his own memory of a quoted passage, or on a collection of quotations such as the Adagies of Erasmus. Calvin was admired by his friends and feared by his enemies as a most learned man. But he never makes a display of his erudition and it seldom interferes with a forthright presentation of the meaning he saw in it and with his communication with his hearers and readers.