Page "Christian philosophy" Paragraph 64

* John Calvin ( 1509 – 1564 ).

Calvin was a dogmatician ( systematic theology ), as exhibited in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, and an exegete who over time translated the Bible from the " original languages " in the form of his grand series of Commentaries on all but one of its books ( the Book of Revelation, which provided a problem to him in its metaphory, not yielding robustly to his binomial formula of letter and spirit: either literal, or figurative ).

He courageously tried to avoid allegorizing, which had had a long history ever since Philo of Alexandria had interpreted the Pentateuch in an allegorical fashion that de-literalized and over-metaphorized ( into symbolic systems ) many passages of the ancient manuscripts of the Bible ( now and developingly a critical text itself ).

Calvin tried to distance himself from the allegorical method of Christian interpretation of the Bible, attempted distance certainly from the method's primacy, while facing in the Gospels " the parabolic message of the Cross " ( Leon Morris, etc .).

Not strictly a philosopher, he had a major impact on the quest for a Protestant philosophy ( see Jacob Klapwijk, " John Calvin " in the volume he edited with Griffioen and Groenewoud, Bringing into Captivity Every Thought ( Eng trans 1991 ; pp 241 – 266 )).

Calvin's seed begat Reformational philosophy 450 years after he planted it.