Mulling over Muller: Calvin and Amyraut

In a passing criticism of my Calvinus, Dr Richard Muller dismisses as ‘unfortunate’ my claim that Amyraut’s soteriology may be identified as ’authentic Calvinism’. Yet even he has admitted that ‘Calvin’s teaching was ... capable of being cited with significant effect by Moïse Amyraut against his Reformed opponents’. So why is my claim so ‘unfortunate’? Others seem to agree with me. According to Dr F. P. van Stam, at a time when Bezan ultra-orthodoxy had replaced Calvin’s balanced biblicism, ‘Amyraut...revealed the attraction which the theology of Calvin held for him. He demonstrated this preference in an array of books, in the process proving his familiarity with the writings of this reformer. ... Amyraut rediscovered Calvin, as it were, and was perhaps the Calvin-expert of the day. In any case, Amyraut fell under the spell of Calvin's theology’. Furthermore, historian Philip Benedict who incorrectly imagines the Canons of the Synod of Dort (1618-19) to represent a higher orthodoxy than is the case recognises Amyraut's position in France accurately when he says that ‘the theologians of the Academy of Saumur ... consciously opposed Beza and appealed to Calvin instead. ... In effect they reversed the steps that had been taken in the passage from Calvin to Calvinism’.