On July 10 in 1509, John Calvin was born. Why not celebrate with a birthday party?

I am always astonished at the amount of anti-Calvin sentiment abroad in the world. I myself am a Wesleyan theologian, so there are a few key areas –maybe about 5– where I come into disagreement with Calvin. But that doesn’t keep me from putting Calvin on my short list of greatest theologians in the history of the church, up there with Athanasius, Augustine, and Aquinas (the A team). And when it comes to authorship, Calvin emerges from that elite pack as undisputed master, for two reasons: he’s the only one who wrote a book which is capable of discipling its reader and teaching the craft of theology. Reading Calvin’s Institutes is like becoming an apprentice to one of the world’s greatest theological craftsmen. The Confessions and the Summa Theologiae won’t do that for you (though they do a lot of other things well). Secondly, Calvin wrote a great quantity of biblical commentary which actually manage to take you deeper into the meaning of the passage he’s commenting on (a rare gift among accomplished theologians).

But people hate John Calvin; especially people who don’t know anything about him. Because popular bigotry against Calvin is so pervasive and deep-seated, I’d like to step aside and leave the task of defending him to a better essayist, Marilynne Robinson. Robinson is now justly famous for her 2004 novel Gilead, which won the Pulitzer. But back in 1998, she published a set of essays called The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought . One of the essays, entitled (oddly enough) “Marguerite de Navarre,” is her attempt to plead Calvin’s case against modern detractors.
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