It is quite likely, as Muller states, that what Calvin meant when he attacked scholastics was not scholastics per se but the theologians of the University of Paris. His polemic aimed at the Sorbonnistes only intensified in later years. This observation points to the contemporary political and theological elements that informed Calvin's thought. Depending on which apparatus is used to divide the chapters, the resulting analysis is radically changed. Modern interpreters have imposed on Calvin something that he might not have recognized.
Muller shows instead the essentially comforting nature of such passages.
This should alert all scholars to the dangers of extrapolating grand arguments from select passages. Changes he made in the work reflected a larger integration of his pastoral work with theological understanding. 5 Muller also examines the additions and restructurings done by later publishers, editors, and scholars, which give an entirely new face to the Institutes, one that would have been virtually unrecognizable to a sixteenth or seventeenth-century reader. By looking at the original editions of the Institutes and studying the developmental aspects of Calvin's thought in the context of all his religious work, Muller shows how Calvin's view of faith was not radically different from that of medieval scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas. This buttresses Muller's assertion that many of Calvin's attacks were aimed not so much as scholastics as at theologians of Paris in his day.