Holder's splendid study of John Calvin's engagement with Christian tradition is a sensitive and instructive look at the ways that Calvin appropriated and expanded elements from the Christian past as he forged biblical interpretations and theological formulations in his attempts at Church reform.

Holder wants to give “a deep consideration of Calvin's engagement with and construction of a useful past, and its constitutive function in his theology” (5). He sees “a paradoxical tension in Calvin's thought” as Calvin “sought to ground his reforms and truth claims in the simple and uncluttered words of scripture, accepting it as a divine source” (6). But Calvin was “a theological conservative who tried to maintain the true essence of medieval European Christianity as it had been passed down to him in liturgy, doctrine, and piety” (7). This means it is too simple to say Calvin wanted to ground his biblical interpretations in solely following the word of God. Historically and contextually, Calvin drew on the patristic past and its theologians in Christian tradition in his “positive constructive theological efforts and his negative polemics. “In a great part,” writes Holder, “Calvin's theology depended upon and arose from engagement with the tradition” (7). In short, “the actual Calvin can be proven to depend upon tradition in greater and more profound manners than even he recognized” (7).

Amidst the host of choices and divisions that marked early modern life in Calvin's times—“Protestant and Catholic, evangelical and Anabaptist, lay and clergy, scholastic and humanistic,” among others—Calvin dealt with the “turmoil” by attempting “both adherence to tradition and to a humanistic model of biblical interpretation” (19). Calvin made choices. Holder shows “why he did so, and what the ramifications were,” so that “the modern thinker will be better able to work through the issues of our own day, many of which stand as monuments to Calvin's influence” (19).

Holder's foundational goals are followed through with his detailed chapters on how Calvin “defined tradition both negatively and positively,” as well as his “use of tradition and his theology of tradition” (39). Holder deals with “Calvin, Tradition, and . . .” in several chapters. The first is a chapter on exegesis, where he considers Calvin's Scripture commentaries with a focus on two New Testament (Romans and II Corinthians) and two Old Testament commentaries (Genesis and Daniel). Holder carefully illustrates that these commentaries, “far from presenting the ‘pure scripture alone,’ present a lively conversation with the exegetical and doctrinal traditions of the early and sometimes even the medieval Church. Calvin used the tradition to help him determine the correct questions to answer in his interpretations. He sought to engage the voices of the patristic authorities, to make room for his own thought, to craft his own interpretive answers, and to provide authority and the imprimatur of orthodoxy to his interpretations” (65–66).

The following chapters consider Calvin's works in polemics (versus Anabaptists, Catholics, Lutherans, and others); vernacular works; and doctrine, where Holder shows Calvin using tradition to frame his arguments, adding authority to and developing his thought—particularly his doctrines of infant baptism, predestination, and the Trinity. In this development, Calvin “began to articulate a theory of the tradition that was authoritative, both for his thought and for the wider ramifications that thought exerted in the Genevan Church, the French evangelical movement, and the network of communities that made up international Calvinism” (199–200).

Holder's close reading of Calvin and recognition of Calvin's own tradition in interpretive matters sets the stage for Holder's chapter on “Tradition as a Historiographical and Cultural Problem” and his section on “Reformed Tradition and Scripture: A New Proposal” (228–31). The book closes with an epilogue of strong contemporary relevance. Holder considers “Biblical Interpretation: The Literal Reading and Reading in a Tradition,” showing that “the idea of a biblically literal community is in itself a tradition” (238). This is a mark of American evangelicalism's literalism on issues of women's ordination, homosexuality, and “evangelical ideals of Christianity and the nation,” as illustrated by “constitutional interpretation: originalism and living constitutionalism” (247–55).

In all, this important book opens us to learning and “coming to a better understanding of the traditions that we receive and are handing on to later generations” (256).