Of all the literary put downs aimed at Calvinism, H. L. Mencken's was arguably the best. Of course, Mark Twain's rendition of Calvinist preaching and Sabbatarian severity in The Adventures of Huck Finn captured well the defect that has tarnished John Calvin's reputation ever since his birth a half millennium ago. According to Huck's description of a Presbyterian worship service:
"It was pretty or-nery preaching, but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination [sic], and I don't know what all, that it did seem to be to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet."
Predestination and Sundays spent in devotional overdrive are not selling points for any faith, especially one having to compete in the land of the free and the home of the brave. But Mencken's single phrase, that Calvinism occupied a place "in his cabinet of horrors but little removed from Cannibalism," took the public relations problem to a whole new level. Because Mencken was a classifier of words and an editor of books, one can well imagine a cabinet in his study where on the "C" shelf, "Calvinism" did in fact sit next to "Cannibalism." One can also plausibly wonder if Mencken believed Calvinism more horrific than its neighbor because it taught the gnashing and grinding of teeth not only in this life but for the lengths of eternity.
Birthday celebrations–especially quincentennials–have a way of changing perceptions. This is no less true for Calvinism, a form of Protestantism that Time magazine recently designated number three on the top ten list of "Ideas Changing the World Right Now." The reason for this strong showing–right between number two, "Recycling the Suburbs," and number four, "Reinstating the Interstate"–had to do with the popularity of certain American evangelical preachers who stress divine sovereignty at conferences where college students earnestly sing Christian rock songs. As surprising as the appeal of Calvinism to youth might be, the more reliable way to exonerate Calvinism is to link it to Puritan New England and the American founding. An online editorial at the Washington Post trotted out quotations from John Adams to George Bancroft that claimed Calvinism to be responsible for the nation's experiment with liberty. Op-ed columns do not provide space sufficient to reconcile doctrines like predestination and actions like the execution of heretics with Calvin's supposed five-hundred-year legacy of liberty. But certainly for people who identify themselves as Calvinist, the quincentennial has yielded relief for sagging self-esteem.
Historians might have a point about the demographics of the American population in 1776, minus of course the religious convictions of the politicians justifying war with England. French, German, and Dutch Reformed along with Scottish and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and English Puritans comprised a formidable portion of the population and the loudest Christian arguments for revolution. But biographers of Calvin find this point much harder to make. Of the several biographies published this year to catch the wave of Calvin's 500th birthday, Bruce Gordon's Calvin is resolutely sheepish in drawing connections between Calvin and twenty-first-century America, let alone Calvin as the source of modernity in the West. The Yale Divinity School professor stays close to the texts to which Calvin devoted most of his energy and to the politics in which Calvin had to negotiate efforts to reform the church. In the process, Gordon reminds readers why writers like Twain or Mencken could so easily ridicule the ideas that most people associate with John Calvin.
Calvin's rise to arguably the greatest Protestant Reformer, second only to Martin Luther, was unexpected. He did not set out to be a reformer or even a church leader. Until 1536, when he turned twenty-seven and began to minister in Geneva, he had given every indication of pursuing a life of contemplation dedicated to the study of texts from Latin and Greek antiquity. Only three years earlier, he had converted from merely supporting church reform–the way humanists did–to a full-blown Protestant. Prior to his conversion, he had studied theology and law in France, the country of his birth. Arguably, the most surprising aspect of Calvin's early life was the detour he took to Geneva en route to what he imagined a life of study in Strasbourg. In Geneva, he met the opinionated preacher, William Farel, who literally put the fear of God in Calvin to stay and work for the city's young Protestant church.
Calvin's first stint in Geneva lasted for two years and must have given him second thoughts about heeding Farel's threat. The city council resisted many of his and Farel's initiatives, especially making the church rather than the state responsible for excommunication. In 1538, Calvin and Farel needed to leave Geneva, and during this time Calvin finally made it to Strasbourg where he ministered to French Protestant refugees. Three years later, Geneva's city council asked Calvin to answer Roman authorities who were hoping to coax Geneva back into the Roman Catholic fold. Calvin's defense of Protestantism smoothed over old tensions and allowed him to return to Geneva, where he worked until his death in 1564, though he did not gain citizenship until 1555.
Gordon faced a difficult challenge in presenting the life of a pastor in a manner appealing to readers beyond the academically gifted or religiously motivated. What helps Gordon's narrative substantially is the political situation in which ministers like Calvin worked. Not only did Calvin wrestle throughout most of his life with Geneva's city council, but Geneva itself held a secondary status within a confederation of cantons and cities in modern-day Switzerland that required its leaders to act in concert with cities like Basel, Bern, and Zurich. At the same time, Calvin's political reach extended beyond the Swiss to all of Europe, thanks to the many Protestant exiles who sought refuge in Geneva and who often took the lessons of Calvin's reform back home. This meant that Calvin corresponded with religious leaders and state officials, from England to Poland. He reserved his greatest care for former countrymen and women who were often the objects of persecution from French authorities. Even then, Calvin's fellow French Protestants needed to weigh Calvin's counsel lest it lead to death. Calvin was not an advocate of Christian rebellion even against obvious tyrants.
Gordon also handles exceptionally well the two major blemishes in the countenance of Calvin's reputation: predestination and the execution of the heretic, Michael Servetus. In both cases, Gordon shows how complicated the issues at stake were and how fragile was Calvin's mastery of the situations, not for lack of effort but because he was only one player among many. Calvin's doctrine of predestination is easily caricatured because it included not simply the idea that God elected some to salvation (single predestination), but actively condemned the rest of fallen humanity (double predestination). Although single predestination is not necessarily any easier for freedom-loving moderns to accept than its darker cousin, and although theologians from Aquinas to Luther at least served the single flavor, Calvin bears the reputation almost solely as a severe teacher of election, merely following cold logic. Gordon demonstrates that Roman Catholics promoted the distaste of predestination to discredit Calvin during his lifetime. He also shows that Calvin's fellow Protestants were uncomfortable with his teaching, even to the point of having his books burned–as vigorous a display of opposing heresy as was then imaginable. Yet Calvin's explanation of the doctrine was eminently plausible (even if unpleasant) given his reading of Scripture, and his counsel to pastors on how to teach and use it was sensible. Gordon ably navigates these choppy theological and historical waters.
The case of Servetus involves even more biographical dexterity than predestination. A renowned heretic throughout Europe, Servetus was also a gifted physician even if an unstable character. Gordon recounts how Servetus almost went out of his way to gain Calvin's attention, and that Calvin tried to warn Servetus of his predicament–holding views that would be banned practically anywhere in Europe. Although Calvin prosecuted the theological case against Servetus, Geneva's city council determined his guilt and the need for execution. Even then, Geneva could not act without the approval of its Swiss allies. Gordon includes the relatively familiar part of the story that has Calvin unsuccessfully recommending what many considered a more humane form of execution: the sword as opposed to being burned at the stake. Gordon sees in aspects of Calvin's conduct a "visceral hatred" of Servetus, an oddly certain judgment upon a man who wrote little about his personal motivation. But Calvin's attitude mattered far less to Servetus's fate than the political realities confronting a small and weak city like Geneva. To maintain the city's reputation and avoid slurs upon Protestantism, Geneva's authorities could do nothing less than execute Servetus.
The only point where Gordon's biography stumbles is in the author's conclusions about Calvin's motives, such as the point about hating Servetus. Gordon argues repeatedly that Calvin was so tight-lipped about himself that biographers need to speculate on his character. Calvin did not even want a marked grave lest he be turned into an object of veneration. On the one hand, Gordon writes, "by concealing himself [Calvin] created space for the faithful to meet God directly." On the other, Gordon does not resist punctuating the narrative with unflattering assessments of Calvin's motivation. This allows Gordon to render the closing scene from Calvin's life in an odd and distancing way. On his deathbed, Calvin was reading excerpts from his papers to fellow ministers and students; his condition was deteriorating, but no one dared interrupt Calvin because they did not want him upset. Gordon takes this as an emblematic moment in Calvin's life: "He was happiest, in the company of friends whom he enjoyed and needed, yet with their acknowledgment of his superiority to the extent of being afraid of him. To the end they were his disciples. That had always been Calvin's way." In point of fact, much of Gordon's biography shows the opposite, that Calvin regularly complied with the wishes and judgments of allegedly inferior peers and colleagues.
It is fair to say that Calvin was a reserved, hard-working pastor and scholar who was always negotiating with political and religious figures well beyond his control. If Gordon's biography reveals any significant truth about Calvin, it is the all too commonsensical one of how human lives, even the ones of seemingly great and influential persons, are captive to circumstances and powers outside their capacity to master. In that way, the truly remarkable aspect of Calvin's life is that among the sixteenth-century Protestant leaders, a man who lived in exile all of his adult life and ministered against his will in a small and relatively unimportant town would become a figure to whom scholars and pundits would attribute the forces of modern politics, economics, and education. Gordon laudably avoids that sort of attribution and recognizes the limitations, both good and bad, both plausible and somewhat far-fetched, of a smart, productive, and in some cases brilliant minister and theologian.
