John Calvin (b. 10 July 1509)

John Calvin was born 10 July 1509 in Noyon, France. He will be remembered for many things, some true and some mythical. Nevertheless, we should take note of his place in history and his role in the recovery of expository preaching. B. B. Warfield, quoting an unnamed source has written:

“In his sober grammatico-historical method, in the stress he laid on the natural sense of the text, by the side of his deep religious understanding of it–in his renunciation of the current allegorizing, in his felicitous, skillful dealing with difficult passages, the humanistically trained master is manifest, pouring the new wine into new bottles.”

Warfield concludes, “Calvin, was, however, a born exegete, and adds to his technical equipment of philological knowledge and trained skill in the interpretation of texts a clear and penetrating intelligence, remarkable intellectual sympathy, incorruptible honesty, unusual historical perception, and an incomparable insight into the progress of thought, while the whole is illuminated by his profound religious comprehension. His expositions of Scripture were accordingly a wholly new phenomenon, and introduced a new exegesis–the modern exegesis. He stands out in the history of biblical study as, what Diestel, for example, proclaims him, ‘the creator of genuine exegesis.’”