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Nigel Voak, Calvin at the Centre. By Paul Helm., The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 62, Issue 1, April 2011, Pages 387–388, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flq163
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Extract
Helm sets out in this study to develop further the approach to Calvin’s thought which he took in John Calvin’s Ideas (2004). Some of the material is an extension of topics treated in that earlier volume, while other subjects are handled for the first time. Rather than simply considering Calvin’s relationship with his predecessors, Helm now also considers Calvin’s intellectual links to later writers. The methodology remains, though, a comparison and contrast of Calvin’s ideas with those of earlier (and later) theologians, rather than an attempt to show exactly what Calvin’s literary sources were, and which later writers were directly indebted to him. As he puts it, ‘my intention [is] to consider both ideas that influenced him, and how they influenced him, and ideas of others which are in some sense a consequence of Calvin’s ideas and so linked to them’. It is this interplay of theological and philosophical ideas which interests Helm, and this approach liberates him to consider (for example) the relation of Calvin and Aquinas on a range of topics, despite the fact that Calvin hardly ever cites his predecessor.
