本人不是研究加尔文方面的专家，尽管有些涉猎，因为按照之前系列中所谈及的，研究加尔文和理解加尔文的思想，不仅仅需要熟悉原文的各种版本基督教要义结构和内容上的变化，也需要熟悉把握16世纪之前思想史和学术史的庞大背景，将加尔文放置在恰当位置之处。学术界公认的加尔文研究的专家Richard Muller曾给出了14点加尔文研究的建议，以供未来一代的研究者参考，我列在下面。
1. 不能够用经院主义和人文主义来对于改教教义进行立场的区分，事实上，单单作为方法时，改教家如加尔文同时使用了这两种方法，不能够认为使用某种方法就导致得到特定的教义如预定论。
2. 不能够简单地用“中世纪”，“文艺复兴”，“宗教改革”这些术语来作为加尔文思想的理解背景，相反，需要考察是哪些特定的观念，文献和个人真正影响到了加尔文的思想。
3. 加尔文的人文主义基础和方法在考察时必须涉及到他在神学争论和对话中的诸位老师和同伴的人文主义。 简单地将加尔文作为人文主义修辞学者会模糊他与哲学性的人文主义方法和对于古代文献的人文主义评价之间的关系。Calvin was adamantly opposed to the reverence for ancient paganism that he observed in a Guillaume Bude or a Johannes Sturm, more amenable to what has been called the "biblical humanism" of the mature Erasmus, and still more attached to the precise use of the locus, of amplificatio for the purpose of edification, and of the Pauline center of biblical interpretation characteristic of the method of Melanchthonian humanism.
4.加尔文的神学不能够简单地用要义来进行概述，也不能够认为只要将加尔文的要义，而是注释，文章和讲道综合起来就可以建立起来。加尔文自己认为，他的思想来自于两种类似的操练，“in the ongoing work of preaching, lecturing, and commenting through the text of Scripture and in the related work of developing disputations and loci based on exegetical insight and presented to particular contexts of positive thought and debate. The Institutes cannot be rightly understood apart from Calvin's exegetical and expository efforts, nor can his exegetical and expository efforts be divorced from his work of compiling the Institutes. ”要义和圣经注释等是相辅相成的，彼此不可或缺。
5. 从上面可见，对于任何进行加尔文实践教义的分析，要义都不是充分的资料，即便是加尔文视为是特定主题topoi ，loci的那些教义也是如此。“Broad, topical exposition that collates texts from throughout Scripture and deals with points of dispute occurs in the Institutes, careful textual study that avoids disputation and broad topical development in order to follow the line and logic of a text occurs in the commentaries and lectures; and more fully developed oratory that expands a particular text topically in the interest both of edification and of piety occurs in the sermons. When, moreover, a given doctrinal issue was not understood by Calvin as a specific locus in theology—for example, such issues as the positive extent of natural theology in a Christian context or the covenant of grace—the Institutes provide either an untrustworthy measure or no measure at all of Calvin's thought on that issue.
6. 理解要义一个重要的版本是1539年版，建立起了主题顺序。“Calvin most clearly and precisely identified the theological loci that he believed ought to be elicited from Scrip- ture and gathered together into a "right order of teaching." If the order changed some- what in 1559, the actual identification of topics or loci altered but little, and, in fact, much of the 1539 Pauline ordo remained in the 1559 edition. The 1539 Institutes, therefore, must become a focus for the investigation of Calvin's thought.
7. 从上一条，可以知道，1537-1541年是加尔文思想发展的关键时期，其中以他阅读了Melanchthon的loci communes（1535/6）,和他发表罗马书注释为关键。
8.要考虑到加尔文是他那个时代解经传统和思想运动的一部分，很多对话和人对他具有影响，如Menlanchthon和Nicholas of Lyra。
9. 加尔文的神学必须被视为是在发展中的神学，而不是完成的成品。“pecifically, a theology that was learned in the course of a life of exegetical, homiletical, and ecclesial labor in close dialogue, positive and negative, with a definable group of partners in conversation. There must, in other words, be a com- parative element in any discussion of Calvin's thought, but it must not be a broad and generalized comparison—much less an eclectic one ！
10。 不可将某些材料绝对化“As a corollary to our recognition of Calvin's place in a sixteenth-century theo- logical conversation, we must refrain from a tendency to absolutize the documents unless they explicitly require us to do so: specifically, Calvin's own explicit identification of sources or of polemical opponents provides only a partial access to his theological conversation. Even when his doctrinal statements appear at their most objective and apodictic they remain rooted in his time, determined by the materials he read, the individuals with whom he conversed and debated, and the broader work in which he was engaged.
11. 我们对于加尔文思想的把握不能够建立在目前英文译本和批判文本的基础上，真正加尔文的研究者还是需要回到原文去把握加尔文思想。目前英语世界需要可靠的译本，因此中文世界未来更是如此。
12. 不能用现代方式解读加尔文“Many, if not all, of the attempts to discover or identify "tensions" in Calvin's thought have arisen out of anachronistic claims of inconsistencies or problems—claims grounded in modern dogmatic concerns, such as what the center of Calvin's theology should have been;which elements of Calvin's teaching can be easily harmonized with a given modern context (and which cannot); or what views expressed by Calvin do not fit a particular grid imposed on his thought
13. 在没有注意到加尔文的方法，从圣经中延伸出教义主题，是无法恰当理解加尔文的“体系化”特点，Muller指出
Even so, we cannot develop a suitable understanding of the "systematic" char- acter of Calvin's thought without close attention to his method—with its concern for the elicitation of doctrinal loci from Scripture, including its assumption that the ordo itself ought to be biblical or, at least, biblically grounded. Only when Calvin is recognized as a sixteenth-century formulator of an orderly series of theological loci and dis- putationes does the true character of his Institutes emerge. His quest for a "right order of teaching" was inseparably related to an exegetical task—a task in which establishment of the scopus and dispositio of a biblical book is as integral to the effort as the exposition of text and as a result of which the scopus and dispositio of the Epistle to the Romans could become determinative of Calvin's "systematic" order.
14. These strictures do not stand in the way of theological studies of Calvin's work—but they do stand in opposition to the use of contemporary theological grids— whether Barthian, Schleiermacherian, or "rhetorical"—as indices or heuristic guides to Calvin's world of thought. The strictures point, instead, to the necessary of discerning the textual and contextual framework in and through which Calvin's work can be rightly understood.
