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John Calvin Student of the Church Fathers

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Calvin is most often associated with Saint Augustine, and for good reason. He considered him the most reliable of all the fathers with regards to dogmatics. St. John Chrysostom, however, was considered a more reliable exegete of Scripture. Bernard of Clairvaux often appears as the third father for Calvin in the Institutes. The best work on the relationship between Calvin and Augustine was done by Luchesius Smits in French. B.B. Warfield wrote "Calvin and Augustine," though it is an inferior work that deals primarily with epistemology. While Lane gives ample attention to the occurrences and potential occurrences of patristic citations in Calvin's works Augustine is neglected to some degree. I can only speculate that Smits's work on Calvin and Augustine set the standard and Lane did not feel the need to add to Smits's work. That is regrettable, however, if one does not read French. Nevertheless Lane's eleven "theses" concerning how one should determine if, when and how Calvin was using a church father are very helpful, especially if you are interested in determining what sources influenced one of Protestantism's greatest theological minds.