Where did Reformed theology originate?
John Calvin, perhaps the greatest theologian of the Reformed tradition, did not see himself as creating a new “school” of theology. He saw himself, and other Reformed pastors, as carrying on the work of the apostles. Even his own work as a sixteenth-century reformer was, in his view, derived from that of Martin Luther, who he termed “most respected father.” Calvin’s magnum opus, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, was not a work in which he advanced all his own ideas about the Christian faith, but freely used the work of other theologians from all periods of church history in order to construct his own theological system. Reformed theology is, then, first and foremost a Christian Theology, not meant to cast away the ancient learning of the church, but to draw it close and renew appreciation and allegiance to it. No one should assume that Calvin either began the Reformed Tradition or that Calvinist perspectives constitute the totality of Reformed thought. Remember that when Calvin
