The following is a post I wrote in 2012. I am simply reiterating the party-line among those who occupy the chairs within the confessionally Reformed world; i.e., that Calvin, along with the whole catholic tradition belongs to them. That they represent the most valid and definitive Protestant reception of the catholic tradition, and that Calvin simply stands among them. Thus, the great revision of Reformed development goes.
Here Muller confirms what I have been asserting all the while; that he sees an organic thread between Calvin and the “orthodox, Calvinists.” He writes:
In the early years of the Reformation emphasis on the faith of the individual and stress on a new found sense of Christus pro me placed atonement at the center of theological concern. Even so, the work of Christ as mediator occupies the center of Calvin’s thought. The following essay will argue in similar terms that Protestant orthodoxy did not depart from this emphasis, that it developed a doctrinal structure more formal in definition and more scholastic in method but nevertheless concerned to maintain a doctrinal continuity with the soteriological emphasis and christological center of the theology of Calvin and his contemporaries. In this development, orthodoxy completed the transition (already evident in the work of Calvin) from piety and the preaching of reform to the system of Reformed doctrine. New structures, like the threefold office and the two states of Christ were integrated into systems of doctrine as formal principles, indeed, as new doctrinal contexts elicited from scripture, in terms of which dogmas received from the traditions — the Chalcedonian christological definition, for example — would be understood and, to a certain extent, reinterpreted. In this context also, the doctrine of the atonement, because it manifested the gracious will of God, moved into close relation with the doctrine of election.[1]
Like I said, a “seamless whole.” Muller represents one of the best working within Reformed scholarship, and also as representative of the attitude that I’ve been trying to engage with. That is, what Muller calls “orthodoxy” is the only “live” option for what it means to consistently and coherently appropriate the thought of Calvin — thus the exclusive claim (by Federal theology) to the name “Calvinist.” It is this thesis that becomes the a priori force that shapes the sectarianism that is now evinced by Calvinists, today. That is, if someone says that there are other, even historic, ways to appropriate Calvin (much more in line with his evangelicalism): these folks are considered heterodox.
I’ve read Muller’s book before; I don’t think he sustains his thesis; I think it remains an ad hoc assertion from him.
[1] Richard Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins, 10.