Evangelical Calvinists, in general, approach their method of biblical interpretation through a Calvinian ‘confessional’ style versus a Medieval-post Reformed orthodox ‘scholastic’ style. Let me explain, a bit, what the differences are between the two approaches (very brief sketches).

Medieval scholasticism was a methodology that someone like Thomas Aquinas (amongst others) made very popular in the 13th century. It entailed a very fine logical-deductive approach to things so that coherence becomes the hallmark. In other words, in this approach all of the rough edges of a particular theological concept, and/or an interpretation of a specific pericope (or passage-paragraph) of Scripture were varnished to a point that all of the gaps of thought were filled in (in other words, speculation became a primary mechanism for filling in the gaps). Here is how Steven Ozment describes this style of “dialectic” interpretation:

In its fully developed form it proceeded from questions (quaestio), to the views pro (videtur quod) and con (sed contra) of traditional authorities on a particular subject, to the author’s own conclusion (responsio). Because they subjected the articles of faith to tight logical analysis, . . . (Ozment, “The Age of Reform,” 6)

This methodology was re-appropriated by the latter reformers (i.e. post Calvin, etc.) into what Richard Muller calls the locus methodology (this also coincides with Agricola and Ramist). In brief, the method seeks to provide precision interpretation; at the point of erring on the side of making interpretive decisions for the sake of satisfying the methodology over and against fidelity to the material communicated in the Text itself.

In contrast to this approach Evangelical Calvinism is much happier with the method seen over and again in Calvin’s Institute of the Christian Religion. His approach is to stay faithful to the text in a way that honors the rough spots and tensions that the text presents (e.g. to avoid speculation). He sought, and Evangelical Calvinists seek to emulate, to simply state what Scriptures states (meaning to follow the contours of scripture wherever it leads, and stops) without also feeling the need to flatten out the text to satisfy the rigors demanded by a pre-commitment to a logical, tight, deductive methodology that the scholastic approach calls for. Here is how J. Todd Billings explains Calvin’s approach:

With this approach, Calvin’s theology in the Institutes is a ‘system’ of theology in a very particular sense. It is not a deductive theory of dogma, where one argues from a centre like ‘predestination’ or even ‘union with Christ’, with a particular dogma functioning as ‘first principles’. On the one hand, Calvin’s loci in the Institutes are drawn from his exegetical work. On the other hand, Calvin does seek to exposit the deep coherence among the loci, a coherence with a Pauline sharpness. But establishing this coherence does not give his theology a deductive logic, particularly on points like predestination, in which his argument is based directly upon his reading of scripture and tradition, tempered only by his doctrine of accommodation that functions in a roughly apophatic way. While Calvin’s loci method is distinctively Reformed in its practice of adopting a Pauline ordo from Romans, it also has continuity with the original construction of topics in Lombard’s twelfth-century Sententia, as Muller has pointed out. It is a system of ‘common places’ relevant to the reading of scripture, holding together the varied doctrinal content of scripture in a distinctively Pauline fashion. (J. Todd Billings, “Calvin, Participation, and the Gift,” 78-9)

This roughly captures an ‘EC’ style and approach to biblical interpretation.