Calvin and the Calvinists?

For me, an intriguing question still persisting in historical theology relates to the relation between John Calvin and those Reformed thinkers that followed in his wake. The classic Barthian-influenced account, repeated many times, is that Calvin - as the normative Reformed theologian - represented a genuine break in content AND method from the medieval scholastic theologians. Calvin for his part was committed both to biblicism and to not speculating.Later scholars returned to the things he had repudiated, distorting and unbalancing Calvin-ism from then on. Basil Hall's landmark article in this and other ways set 'Calvin against the Calvinists'.

Richard Muller supported by Carl Trueman in recent years have returned fire. As Trueman writes:

The account of the development of Reformed theology which this definition of scholasticism promotes is one whereby the pristine, non-metaphysical, exegetical theology of Calvin is slowly replaced by a speculative, metaphysical, overly-rational, and hair-splitting dogmatism, as represented by later theologians such as Voetius, Turretin, and John Owen.

I myself have believed and passed this on: and especially the more Barthian thinkers will assume this narrative. Trueman's argument in response is that 1) Calvin isn't the normative figure everyone assumes - rather the great Reformed confessions hold that place; 2) the name 'Calvinism' is actually unhelpful and polemical; 3) we need to look to the occassion and nature of each of the texts under question to fairly evaluate them. 4) Scholasticism as a method (the use of syllogisms and so on) has had a bad press and in fact was just the pedagogical method available for working in the university of the time; 5) Aristotelian metaphysics and rationality were used by everybody because this was the rationality of the day: it is not in itself proof of distortion...

I am not yet convinced. I heed the warning about the complexity of the historical picture and the breadth of Reformed dogmatic theology. However, when we read Calvin we are breathing a different air from that we later breathe. Calvin's humanist background gave him a pedagogical method and style altogether different from the Paris of his youth. It was not an accident that this style liberated him as a theologian. In the Institutes he is quite polemical about exactly the vices you find displayed in the later Protestant Orthodox, because that method and style had produced such skewed results in the past...