Sticking by the Bible

2009 Books Issue | A 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism | Marvin Olasky

Engraving by I. Covens and C. Mortier/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

A biographer's task is to narrate the arc of a life, not merely assemble a set of facts. He needs to enlist not just mind but heart, building sympathy for his subject while retaining sufficient critical distance to see him not as he saw himself, but perhaps as God sees him. Dutch scholar Herman Selderhuis accomplishes those tasks admirably in John Calvin: A Pilgrim's Life. Relying heavily on Calvin's letters to friends and associates, he portrays him as not merely the great brain but a pilgrim with hemorrhoids, a man who knew his flaws but also knew that God, for Christ's sake, had forgiven him.

Secularists and some Christians think of Calvin, born on July 10, 1509, as a person who wanted to force theological conformity, but Selderhuis notes, "For Calvin, conversion meant freedom, a liberation from the torments of the conscience, from the feeling that whatever he did was sinful and wrong." He realized that the disciplines celebrated by medieval Catholicism—penance, fasting, and other forms of self-flagellation—were not required and could be harmful. He proposed instead, and modeled in his life, the discipline of work in a calling, and the discipline of service, particularly to the poor. Calvin's emphasis on godly work outside of ecclesiastical pursuits opened the door to many vocations. He saw God's grace in scientific discovery, because learning more about the created world taught us about the Creator. He argued that biblical opposition to usury referred to interest-free charitable loans, and that extending this ban to regular economic activity would reduce opportunities to promote business expansion and human flourishing. He thought the best way to tackle poverty was not to distribute alms but to open a business and employ those who would otherwise beg.