John Calvin: Man of Contradictions, Shaper of Modernity. Age? 500 Next Week.
He was born on July 10, 1509, a religious thinker and leader who may have done as much as anyone to shape the modern world. And yet after 500 years, John Calvin is still not an easy man to understand.
Calvin is often imagined, if he is imagined at all, as the implacable snoop who enforced a prudish morality on the citizens of Geneva, a steely spinner of harsh theological doctrines about a depraved humanity and a fierce God predestining people to heaven or hell.
“When we talk about our history, Calvin does not figure in the conversation,” Marilynne Robinson, prizewinning novelist, has complained, “or when he does, it is as Adam Smith’s censorious cousin.”
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Calvin is often imagined, if he is imagined at all, as the implacable snoop who enforced a prudish morality on the citizens of Geneva, a steely spinner of harsh theological doctrines about a depraved humanity and a fierce God predestining people to heaven or hell.
“When we talk about our history, Calvin does not figure in the conversation,” Marilynne Robinson, prizewinning novelist, has complained, “or when he does, it is as Adam Smith’s censorious cousin.”