Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are conducting
what I think is going to be a bit of a forensic
audit. A forensic audit. I like that. Yeah, we're
looking at a reputation that has been, you know,
set in stone, essentially fossilized for about
500 years. At least. We're tackling a figure
who looms over Western history like a massive
gray skyscraper. You can't miss him, yet somehow...
Most people only ever see the shadow he casts.
Right. Never the actual building itself. Exactly.
We were talking about the man, the myth, the
lawyer, the theologian. John Calvin. It's good
to be here. And you are absolutely right about
that shadow. I think if we were to walk down
the street right now and ask 10 random people
what comes to mind when they hear John Calvin,
I guarantee nine of them would give you the exact
same cluster of words. Oh, I can hear them now.
You'd hear joyless. You'd hear severe. You definitely,
definitely hear predestination. Yes. Or my personal
favorite, the big one, theocratic dictator. Oh,
absolutely. The mental image is immediate. I
picture a guy in a severe black robe, maybe a
fur collar, just frowning at a child for laughing.
Banning dancing. Banning dancing, canceling Christmas,
and telling everyone they're going to hell and
there's absolutely nothing they can do about
it. Right. It's the ultimate frozen, chosen caricature.
It's almost like he's the villain in a Footloose
movie. Yeah. But, you know, set in the 16th century.
That's a perfect image. And to be fair, it's
one that his enemies and frankly, some of his
stricter followers have helped cultivate over
the centuries. Sure. But our mission today is
to take a sledgehammer to that marble statue.
We want to peel back layers of centuries of bad
PR and find the actual human being underneath
because the reality is so much messier and honestly,
infinitely more interesting. We aren't talking
about a statue. We're talking about a French
refugee. A brilliant humanist lawyer, and this
is the part that always shocks people, a man
who never actually wanted to be a pastor in the
first place. That is the hook for me. The idea
that one of the most influential religious leaders
in history, the guy who has an entire ism named
after him. Calvinism, yeah. Wasn't just like
dragged kicking and screaming into the job. So
our goal today is to explore how a guy who just
wanted a quiet life of books, a little wine,
and some study, ended up reshaping our views
on work, government, capitalism, and even the
human soul. And to do that, we have a massive
stack of sources. We aren't just skimming Wikipedia
here. Right. We are pulling from historical biographical
data his huge collection of correspondence letters
to other reformers like Philip Melanchthon, where
he really lets his guard down and complains about
his health and his enemies. So the juicy stuff.
The really human stuff. We have records from
the Geneva City Council, which read like a legal
drama. And of course, his magnum opus, The Institutes
of the Christian Religion. Which I assume is
a light bee treat, something to take on vacation.
It's about as light as a concrete block, but
it's essential. It's one of those books that
built the modern world. And for you, the listener,
here's the value proposition, the why should
I care factor. Yeah, why does this matter? Whether
you are religious or an atheist, whether you
identify as a Calvinist or you run the other
way when you hear the name, Calvin's ideas on
checks and balances in government, the Protestant
work ethic, and the value of universal education
have likely shaped the society you live in. Wow.
You can't really understand the architecture
of the modern Western world without grappling
with this lawyer from Noyon. So let's not bury
the late. Let's go back to the source. You mentioned
he was a lawyer from Noyon. Let's set the scene.
The year is 1509. The world is changing. Where
does the John Calvin story begin? We're in the
Picardy province of France in a town called Noyon.
It's an old cathedral town, very steeped in the
medieval way of doing things. And on July 10th,
1509, a boy named Jean Calvin is born. Jean Calvin.
So John Calvin is just the anglicized version
we use today. Correct. And to understand John,
you really have to understand his father, Gerard
Covan. Girard was not a warm and fuzzy figure.
He was a self -made man, very ambitious. He was
a cathedral notary and a registrar for the ecclesiastical
court. Okay, let's pause and translate that into
modern terms. What does a cathedral notary actually
do? It sounds like he just stamps papers. You
should think of him more as a... A high level
administrator or maybe a corporate lawyer for
the church. He wasn't a priest. He was a bureaucrat.
He knew where the money was. He knew how the
patronage system worked and he knew where all
the skeletons were buried. So he was a fixer.
He was a man who understood the machinery of
the institution. And Gerard had a very specific
plan for his sons. He wanted them to climb the
social ladder. He didn't want them to be peasants.
He wanted them to be power players. the classic
ambitious dad living vicariously through his
kids You're going to be a doctor, or in this
case, you're going to be a bishop. Precisely.
Originally, the plan for John was the priesthood,
not because Gerard was particularly pious, necessarily,
but because the church was the best career path
for a bright boy from the middle class. And in
fact, Calvin was something of a child prodigy.
He was incredibly precocious. By the age of 12,
he was already employed as a clerk by the local
bishop. Wait, employed at 12? I was barely managing
a paper route at 12, and I wasn't very good at
it. How does a 12 -year -old work for a bishop?
It was a patronage system. It's called a benefice.
Basically, you get a title and a salary, often
funded by the revenue of a specific parish, and
that money is supposed to support your education.
So it's a scholarship. It was a scholarship,
but it came with ecclesiastical strings attached.
He even received the tonsure at that age. The
tonsure, that's the haircut, right. The friar
tuck look with the bald spot. Exactly. They shaved
the crown of the head. It was a rite of passage
symbolizing that you were now, in a sense, property
of the church. You were a cleric in the making.
That's intense for a 12 -year -old. It gave you
legal status. You were now under church law,
not civil law. So picture this. At 12 years old.
John Calvin is walking around with a bald spot
on purpose, marked out for the priesthood. He
goes off to the University of Paris, specifically
the Collège de Montague, which was famous for
being incredibly strict. Part of that place.
Erasmus went there and complained about the bad
eggs and the harsh discipline. Calvin, however,
thrived. He was a grinder. He was a serious student.
So he's on the fast track to becoming a bishop
or a high -ranking theologian. He's got the haircut.
He's got the scholarship. But then there's a
pivot. The outline says his father changed his
mind. Yes, and this is a crucial turning point.
A few years later, his father, Gerard, had a
falling out with the church authorities in Noyon.
It was a financial dispute involving the administration
of an estate, and suddenly he looked at the changing
world and made a pragmatic calculation. Okay.
He pulled John out of his theology studies and
told him to go to law school instead. Why the
switch? Did John lose his faith? Was there some
kind of scandal? No, it was purely about the
wallet. According to Calvin's own account later,
his father realized that lawyers made a lot more
money than priests. You have to remember the
nation state was rising. The king of France was
consolidating power. Bureaucracies were growing.
Law was the new boom industry. It was the tech
sector of the 1520s. Some things never change.
Forget the soul, son. Look at the billable hours.
Exactly that. So dutiful son that he was, Calvin
packs his bags and goes to the University of
Orleans and later Borge to study law. And I cannot
stress this enough. This is the key to understanding
who he became. How so? He wasn't just memorizing
statutes or loopholes. He was immersed in the
intellectual movement of the day. Humanism. OK,
we need to pause on that word humanism. When
we hear that today, we think of secular humanism,
atheism, putting humans at the center of the
universe instead of God. But that's not what
it meant in the 1520s, right? Not at all. It's
almost the opposite of secularism. Renaissance
humanism was an intellectual movement that was
all about a Latin phrase, ad fontes. Ad fontes.
It means to the sources. The idea was that the
Middle Ages had been a period of darkness, fog,
and corruption where layers of tradition and
bad translations had obscured the truth. Okay.
The humanists wanted to bypass the medieval clutter,
the middlemen, and go back to the original texts
of antiquity. They wanted to read Roman law in
the original Latin Greek philosophy in the original
Greek, and most importantly, the Bible in its
original languages. So it's like textual archaeology.
Yeah. Digging through the mud to find the original.
artifact that is a perfect analogy and calvin
fell in love with this he learned coin greek
which was a dangerous skill at the time why dangerous
because it allowed you to read the new testament
in the original rather than relying on the latin
vulgate which the church had used for a thousand
years and if you can read the original you can
start to see where the church might have gotten
things wrong you start to see that the word for
due penance in the vulgate is actually repent
or change your mind in the greek that changes
the theology entirely so he's building this toolkit.
He has the logic of a lawyer, the critical thinking
of a scholar, and the language skills of a linguist.
He's becoming a weaponized intellectual. Yes.
In fact, his first published book wasn't about
the Bible at all. It was published in 1532, a
commentary on Seneca's De Clementia. Seneca.
The Roman Stoic. The Roman Stoic philosopher,
yes. Calvin wanted to make a name for himself
as a classical scholar, like Erasmus. He wanted
to be the smartest guy in the literary world.
That is fascinating. So if you met John Calvin
at a dinner party in his early 20s, he wouldn't
be lecturing you on predestination. He'd be boring
you with nuances of Roman legal theory and Stoic
philosophy. Precisely. He was an intellectual
snob, essentially. He approached faith with the
logic of a lawyer and the linguistic precision
of a scholar. But then something happened. The
timeline is a bit fuzzy, but somewhere between
1532 and 1534, the lawyer becomes the believer.
He breaks from the Roman Catholic Church. The
conversion. Now, in the notes, it says there's
a bit of a mystery here. Most famous religious
figures have a clear road to Damascus moment.
Luther had the lightning storm. Augustine had
the child singing, pick up and read. What was
Calvin's moment? It depends on which text you
read, and this speaks to Calvin's personality.
He was notoriously private about his inner life.
He almost never wrote about himself. Why not?
He believed that talking about his own experiences
was a form of vanity. But we have two main accounts.
In the preface to his commentary on the Psalms,
written much later, he writes that God by a sudden
conversion, subita conversio, subdued his mind
to docility. Sudden conversion, that sounds dramatic,
like a lightning bolt. It does. He describes
his mind as being hardened like a beast, and
God had to break it open. But then we have a
letter he wrote to Cardinal Satellito, we'll
talk about him later, where he describes a much
longer, more painful process. Okay. He talks
about being alarmed at his spiritual misery,
trying to find peace in Catholic rituals and
failing, and eventually condemning his past life
with groans and tears. Groans. And tears. That
sounds agonizing. Sounds like a mental breakdown
or a deep depression. Yeah. So which was it?
The lightning bolt or the slow burn? Most modern
scholars, like the biographer Bruce Gordon, argue
they aren't contradictory. The sudden part might
refer to the final decision to break away at
the moment the decision was made. while the groans
and tears describe the long period of wrestling
that led up to it. I see. You have to remember,
leaving the Catholic Church in 1530s, France
wasn't just changing denominations. It wasn't
like moving from a Baptist church to a Methodist
one. It was treason. It was heresy. It was risking
being burned alive. And that danger became real
very quickly, right? I'm looking at the cop incident
in 1533. This sounds less like a theological
dispute and more like a scene from a spy thriller.
It really does. So Calvin is in Paris. He's hanging
out with these underground reformist circles.
His good friend, Nicholas Copp, is elected rector
of the University of Paris. A big deal. A very
prestigious position. Copp has to give an inaugural
address on All Saints Day, November 1st, 1533.
High profile gig. All the faculty are there.
The dignitaries. Exactly. And usually you'd give
a boring speech thanking the faculty and praising
the king. Instead, Copp gives a speech that quotes
Erasmus. and Luther. He calls for reform and
renewal in the church and he attacks the conservative
theologians of the Sorbonne, calling them sophists.
That is a bold move. Too bold. It was a declaration
of war. The faculty denounced it as heresy immediately.
Kopp had to flee Paris that very night to avoid
arrest. Wow. And because Calvin was such a close
friend, the authorities assumed he was involved.
The casual rumor is that Calvin helped write
the speech or at least influenced it heavily.
So the police came for him, too. So he's on the
run. Legend has it he escaped out of a window
using bed sheets, though that might be apocryphal.
But he definitely went into hiding. He used aliases.
He was Charles Despaville for a while. He went
to Angoulême and sheltered in the library of
a friend, Louis Dutille. He was effectively a
fugitive, moving from safe house to safe house,
relying on a network of sympathizers. And the
heat got turned up even higher with the affair
of the placards in 1534. What was that? That
was the tipping point. Up until then, the king
of France, Francis the Serf, had been somewhat
tolerant of the humanists because his sister,
Marguerite Navarre, liked them. Okay. But on
the night of October 17, 1534, radical Protestants
put up anti -Catholic posters or placards all
over Paris, Orleans, and other cities, and these
posters were incredibly offensive to Catholics.
They attacked the mass, calling it gross abuse
and idolatry. So this wasn't a polite request
for dialogue. This was graffiti warfare. It was
a massive... provocation. And one of these placards
was even found on the door of the king's bedroom
at the Chateau d 'Amboise. Whoa. That is a massive
security breach. That's like finding a threatening
note on the president's bedside table inside
the White House. Exactly. King Francis panicked.
He felt his authority was being challenged. He
cracked down hard. He started burning people.
Dozens were arrested. Several were executed.
Calvin realized there was no future for him in
France. The environment had shifted from cautious
tolerance to active persecution. He had to get
out. He fled to Basel, Switzerland, which was
a Protestant safe haven. So he's a refugee. He's
left his home, his career path as a lawyer, his
country. He's stripped of everything. And this
brings us to what the notes call the accidental
pastor. Because at this point, sitting in Basel,
he still doesn't want to lead a church, right?
He just wants to write. Not at all. In Basel,
he keeps his head down. He writes the first edition
of the Institutes of the Christian Religion.
It was published in 1536. But even then, he viewed
it as a handbook and, crucially, as an apology,
a defense for the faith to the King of France.
He wanted to prove that Protestants weren't anarchists
or rebels, just faithful Christians. But his
personal ambition hadn't changed. He wanted to
be a writer. A scholar. He wanted to go to Strasbourg,
which was a German free city, find a quiet corner,
and write books. The introverted dream. Just
me and my library. But then comes the detour.
The detour that changes Western history. It is
one of those great what -if moments. In July
1536, Calvin is trying to get to Strasbourg.
But there are military maneuvers happening. King
Francis I is fighting the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V. The direct road is blocked by troops.
So he has to go around. He has to take a detour
south. He decides to stay for one single night
in Geneva. One night? Just a stopover? Just a
layover. He stays at an inn, probably under an
assumed name, but... Someone spots him. We don't
know who. Maybe a former student, maybe someone
who had read the Institutes. Because the Institutes
had made him a minor celebrity by now. Yes, it
was a bestseller in the underground market. So
word gets to William Farrell. Now we need to
talk about Farrell. Okay, who's Farrell? Farrell
was this fiery, red -headed, explosive French
reformer who had been trying to turn Geneva Protestant.
Geneva had just thrown out its Catholic bishop
and declared itself independent, but the city
was in religious chaos. Right. Farrell was a
great agitator. He could start a riot. But he
wasn't a great organizer. He was drowning in
the details. He needed a brain. So Farrell hears
the brain is in town for one night. Does he send
a polite invitation? A fruit basket? Farrell
didn't do polite. He storms into the inn. He
confronts Calvin and demands that he stay and
help reform the church in Geneva. And Calvin
says? Calvin refuses. He says, look, I'm 27 years
old. I'm a scholar. I'm shy. I'm not healthy.
I need quiet. I can't do this public leadership
thing. I'm not a politician. I can relate to
that. Please, just let me read my books. He's
putting up boundaries. But Farrell wouldn't take
no for an answer. And this is the cinematic moment.
Farrell stands up. Wow. He literally curses Calvin's
retirement. That is intense. A curse from a fiery
preacher and a candlelit inn. That would terrify
me. It terrified Calvin. He later wrote in his
introduction to the Psalms that he felt stricken
with terror, as if God himself had reached down
from heaven and laid his violent hand upon him
to stop him. So he actually believed it? He felt
he had no choice. He was superstitious enough
or faithful enough to believe this was a sign.
He agreed to stay. Talk about being guilt -tripped
into a job. Nice soul you have there, be ashamed
if God cursed it. Yeah. So he stays. He's the
reluctant recruit. How does it go? Does the brilliant
scholar lawyer fix Geneva overnight? It was an
absolute disaster. A total flop. A total failure.
You have to understand the dynamic. Geneva was
a rowdy commercial city. They had just kicked
out their Prince Bishop because they wanted political
freedom. Right. They didn't want a new set of
rules. Then here comes this young, serious French
intellectual. And remember, the Swiss and the
French have always had a bit of tension telling
them they need to stop gambling, stop sleeping
around, and sign a confession of faith. I can
see the clash coming. It's the classic town versus
gown problem. The academics versus the locals.
Exactly. Calvin and Farrell drew up these articles
on organization. They wanted to excommunicate
people for immoral behavior. They wanted the
power to ban people from the communion table.
And the city council. The city council looked
at this and said, who do you think you are? We
didn't get rid of a bishop just to replace him
with two pastors. And then there was the bread
riot. The notes mentioned something about unleavened
bread. Sounds so petty. The bread riot. It sounds
silly to modern ears, but liturgy was political.
The city of Bern was Geneva's powerful military
ally. Bern used unleavened bread for communion
like a wafer. Okay. Calvin and Farrell didn't
really care about the bread per se. Calvin actually
preferred ordinary leavened bread, but they didn't
want the civil government telling the church
how to worship. It was a jurisdiction issue.
The council ordered them to use the burn -style
wafers to keep the alliance happy. So it was
a power struggle. Church versus state, fought
over a cracker. Exactly. It came to a head at
Easter, 1538. The council ordered them to use
the wafers. Calvin and Farrell said, if we can't
control the altar, we won't serve communion at
all. They went on strike during Easter services.
Oh, wow. No communion on Easter. That's like
canceling Christmas dinner. That's the Super
Bowl of the church year. It was explosive. Riots
ensued in the church. Swords were drawn. It was
chaos. The next day, the city council fired them
both and gave them three days to get out of town.
Banished. So much for the divine calling. Farrell's
curse didn't seem to work out. Calvin was arguably
relieved. He essentially said, good riddance.
He wrote, if we had served men, we would have
been ill -rewarded, but we serve a great master
who will pay us what he owes. He headed to Strasbourg,
which is where he wanted to go in the first place.
So he finally gets his wish, and this begins
what the outline calls the Strasbourg Interlude.
This sounds like the happiest time of his life.
It really was. From 1538 to 1541, he lived in
Strasbourg. He was invited by Martin Busser,
who was a much older, wiser reformer. Busser
became a father figure to him. He basically took
Calvin under his wing and said, OK, you have
the raw talent, but you have zero people skills.
Let me teach you. So he's in rehab for failed
pastors. In a way. And it worked. He became the
pastor of a church for French refugees. So he's
back among his own people, speaking his own language,
not struggling with the Swiss dialect. And he
learned how to be a pastor. In Geneva, he was
trying to be a ruler. In Strasbourg, he was a
shepherd. What did that look like? He visited
the sick. He counseled people. He buried the
dead. He expanded the institutes. He wrote a
brilliant commentary on Romans. He even introduced
congregational singing the Psalms. Before that,
the people just listened to choirs. Calvin wanted
the people to sing their prayers. also where
he gets married, right? The Calvin in love section.
I have to say the quote in the notes is hilarious.
He tells a friend, I'm not of the mad kind of
lovers who embrace even the vices of those they
are in love with. He was very practical, unsentimental.
His friends urged him to marry to help with the
household and his health. He was always sickly.
So they were matchmaking for him. They were.
And he gave them a list of requirements like
a job description. He wrote, the only beauty
which allures me is this, that she be chased.
obliging not fastidious economical patient and
careful for my health he was hiring a spouse
must be good with budgets and nursing it sounds
so cold it sounds unromantic but he eventually
found idolette debur she was a widow of an anabaptist
he had converted she had two children and despite
the pragmatic beginning by all accounts they
had a deeply affectionate relationship we see
a crack in the robot armor here absolutely it
was a short marriage she died in 1549 after only
nine years together and calvin was The best friend
of my life. That's beautiful. It completely contradicts
the emotionless statue image. It does. It shows
he was capable of deep connection and deep grief.
But his time in Strasbourg couldn't last. Geneva
was falling apart without him. They realized
they made a mistake. Chaos returned to Geneva.
The Catholic Church tried to win the city back.
Cardinal Sadalato wrote a very persuasive letter
inviting them back to Rome, and the city council
didn't know how to answer it. They were out of
their depth. They needed their intellectual heavyweight.
They realized they needed a heavyweight to debate
the cardinals and organize the church. They needed
their lawyer back. And I assume he jumped to
the chance. I told you so! He was horrified.
When the letter came asking him to return, he
wrote to Farrell, Rather would I submit to death
a hundred times than to that cross on which I
had to perish daily a thousand times over. He
called Geneva a cross. A place of torture. He
remembered the riots, the insults, the stress.
He did not want to go back. But he went. He felt
it was God's will. He couldn't say no to duty.
In 1541, he returned. Strasbourg lent him to
Geneva for six months, but he never left. He
arrived with a wagon for his family, and he stayed
until he died. So this begins the main act, part
four. Return to Geneva and the theocracy debate.
This is where the rubber meets the road. He sets
up the ecclesiastical ordinances. How did he
structure this new church? He defined four offices,
pastors to preach, doctors to teach so, the academics
elders to discipline, and deacons to care for
the poor. But the controversial part, the engine
of the whole controversy, was the consistory.
The consistory. That sounds like a sinister secret
society in a Dan Brown novel. What was it? It
was an ecclesiastical court made up of the pastors
and 12 lay elders, and the elders were elected
by the city council. Their job was to maintain
the moral discipline of the city. How? They met
every Thursday. If you were caught gambling,
fighting, beating your wife, or skipping church,
you got summoned to the consistory. And this
is where the theocracy label comes from. People
think Calvin was the Ayatollah of Geneva just
running everything. That is the myth. But historians
have really pushed back on the word theocracy.
If by theocracy you mean the church ran the government,
that's just false. Calvin held no civil office.
He wasn't the mayor. He wasn't a counselor. He
was a refugee pastor who wasn't even a citizen
of Geneva until near the end of his life. Wait,
he wasn't a citizen for most of that time. No.
As a French refugee, he had no voting rights.
He couldn't run for office. And crucially, the
consistory had no civil jurisdiction. What does
that mean, practically? They could scold you.
They could excommunicate you, meaning bar you
from communion. But they couldn't fine you, imprison
you, or kill you. Only the city council, the
little council, could do that. But didn't the
council just do whatever Calvin wanted? Wasn't
he pulling the strings? Definitely not. For most
of his time there, from 1541 to 1555, the council
was controlled by his political enemies. They
fought him constantly. They hated him. Let's
talk about those enemies. The Libertines. Again,
sounds like a fun party group, but I suspect
they weren't. They called themselves the Patriots,
or Children of Geneva. Calvin called them libertines.
These were the old, wealthy, established families
of Geneva. They hated that this French refugee
was telling them how to live. They felt he was
destroying their culture. The notes mentioned
some specific clashes. Tell us about the card
maker. Pierre Amo. He was a manufacturer of playing
cards. Calvin's preaching against gambling was,
you know, hurting his bottom line. Right. So
one night at a dinner party, Amo gets drunk and
starts shouting that Calvin is a Picard, which
was a slur for Frenchmen, and a teacher of false
doctrine. Just a drunk rant at a party. Yes,
but word got back. The council arrested him.
Calvin wanted a modest punishment, but the council,
in a weird twist, decided to humiliate him to
show they were serious about order. They forced
him to walk through the city in his shirt sleeves,
kneeling at intersections to beg for forgiveness.
That's incredibly harsh. And Amo's family never
forgave Calvin, even though it was the council's
sentence. It created a vendetta. And then there
was the dancing incident. The Ami Perrin affair.
Ami Perrin was a military hero, the captain general
of the city. He was a libertine leader. His wife,
Francoise, was caught dancing at a wedding. Dancing
was illegal. So it became a huge political fight.
A massive power struggle. Perrin tried to destroy
Calvin's authority to excommunicate. It was a
question of can the state tell the church who
can take communion? And Calvin's answer was over
my dead body. It sounds exhausting. He's fighting
the government every single day. And the threats
were real. People named their dogs Calvin so
they could kick them in the street. They shot
muskets outside his window at night to keep him
awake. And then there was Jacare. This one seems
darker. Much darker. Gruet was a wealthy libertine.
One day, a threatening letter was found on Calvin's
pulpit. It basically said, you'd better get out
of town or you'll get what's coming to you. We
won't wait for a trial. A death threat. Yes.
The council investigated. They searched Gruet's
house and found papers attacking Christianity
itself, calling Jesus a fraud and mocking the
Virgin Mary. In the 16th century, that was blasphemy
and treason. And what happened to him? Gruet
was tortured and beheaded. That brings us to
the edge. And we can't do a deep dive on Calvin
without jumping off that edge into the biggest
shadow over his legacy. We have to talk about
Michael Servetus. No, you can't avoid it. It
is the defining controversy of his life. If you
know one bad thing about Calvin, it's that he
burned Servetus. So who was Servetus? Why was
he so controversial? Michael Servetus was a Spanish
polymath. A genius, really. In the history of
science, he's actually famous for being the first
European to correctly describe pulmonary circulation,
how blood moves from the heart to the lungs.
He was a doctor, a geographer, and a theologian.
A brilliant scientist, then. And a radical heretic
by the standards of the day. He wrote a book
called The Restoration of Christianity, where
he denied the Trinity. He believed the doctrine
of the Trinity Father, Son, Holy Spirit was a
correction, a three -headed Cerberus. He also
rejected original sin and infant baptism. Now
for the modern listener. Denying the Trinity
might sound like a theological technicality,
but in the 1500s, this was nuclear, right? It
was a capital crime. You have to understand the
pollution mindset. Pre -modern people believed
that heresy was like a virus. If you let a heretic
spread his ideas, he didn't just have a wrong
opinion. He was infecting the souls of the community,
damning them to hell, and inviting God's wrath
upon the city. So it was a public health crisis.
Exactly. And both Catholics and Protestants agreed
on this. Anti -Trinitarians had to die. Everyone.
The Catholic Inquisition in France had already
arrested him in Vienne. He managed to escape
prison, but they burned him in effigy. He was
a dead man walking in Catholic Europe. So he
escapes the Inquisition and decides to go to
Geneva. To Calvin City. Why on earth would he
do that? That seems suicidal. That is the great
mystery. He and Calvin had corresponded years
earlier. It did not go well. Servetus sent Calvin
insulting letters. Calvin eventually stopped
writing, telling Farrell in a private letter,
and this is very damning. If he comes here, if
my authority is worth anything, I will never
let him depart alive. Ominous. A very clear threat.
Very. So Servetus shows up in Geneva in August
1553. He goes to Church St. Pierre Cathedral
while Calvin was preaching. He was recognized
by someone in the congregation and arrested.
And this is where the Libertines get involved.
This is where it gets political. The Libertines'
Ami Perrin and his crew controlled the council
at this time. They hated Calvin. They saw an
opportunity. To use Servetus against him. They
thought if they could use Servetus to humiliate
Calvin or maybe prove that Calvin was too harsh,
they could finally break his power. So they made
the trial difficult. They let Servetus argue
in court. Servetus actually thought the Libertines
might save him and execute Calvin instead. He
thought he could flip the script. He did. He
called Calvin a sorcerer in court. But eventually
the theology was just too radical. The council
wrote to other Swiss cities, Zurich, Bern, Basel,
asking for advice. And they all wrote back saying,
this man is a cancer. He must be stopped. So
the Libertines were cornered. They realized they
couldn't save him without looking like heretics
themselves, so the council condemned him to be
burned alive. And what was Calvin's role in the
actual execution? Did he light the match? No.
Calvin served as the prosecutor for the theology.
He argued that Servetus was guilty. But, and
this is a nuance often missed, Calvin argued
for a different mode of execution. He asked the
council to behead him. Why beheading? Burning
was seen as particularly cruel. It was torture.
Calvin believed the death penalty was biblically
justified for heresy. Almost everyone did back
then. But he didn't want the spectacle of the
stake. He wanted a swift execution. The council
refused Calvin's request, specifically to spite
him. To show who was in charge. To show they
were in charge, not the pastor. They burned Servetus
on October 27, 1553. That is a heavy, heavy legacy.
It is. It's the stain that never washes out.
Apologists try to minimize it, but the fact is
Calvin prosecuted him and supported the death
sentence. But we do have to remember the context.
If Servetus had gone to London, Vienna, or Paris,
he would have been burned there too. It was a
brutal age. So we've seen the politician, the
disciplinarian, the prosecutor. Let's pivot to
the thinker. Part six. Theology. The Institutes.
You mentioned it grew from six chapters to 80.
What was the big idea? If you could summarize
Calvinism on a napkin. What is it? The core of
Calvin's theology is the knowledge of God and
the knowledge of self. He believed you can't
know one without the other. And his starting
point is that the human mind is broken. He famously
called the human heart a perpetual idol factory.
Idol factory. That's a sticky phrase. What did
he mean by that? He meant that left to our own
devices, we are constantly inventing false gods.
If we don't worship the God of the Bible, we
will worship money, power, sex, our nation, our
children, our career. We take good things and
turn them into ultimate things. And because our
mind's eye is blurry due to sin, we need spectacles
to see clearly. For Calvin, those spectacles
are scripture. So the Bible puts the world in
focus. And this brings us to, we have to talk
about the P word, predestination. The elephant
in the room. Why is Calvin the poster boy for
this? Didn't others believe it? They did. Augustine,
Aquinas, Luther, they all believed in some form
of predestination because, quite frankly, it's
in the Bible. Ephesians 1 talks about being...
chosen before the foundation of the world. Right.
But Calvin systematized it. He was a fearless
logician. He followed the logic to the end of
the line. And the end of the line is double predestination.
Right. The idea that God doesn't just choose
some for heaven, which is election, but he actively
passes over others, leaving them for damnation,
which is reprobation. That seems cruel. It seems
like God is creating people just to throw them
in the trash. Calvin admitted it was terrifying.
He used the Latin phrase decritum horribly. The
horrible decree. But by horrible, he didn't mean
bad or evil. He meant awe -inspiring or dreadful
in the archaic sense, like a horror movie that
shakes you to your core. He knew how it sounded.
He didn't enjoy it. He felt bound by scripture
to teach it. He essentially said, my hands are
tied. This is what the text says. But for him,
it wasn't about scaring people. It feels like
a scare tactic. No, and this is the irony. For
Calvin, predestination was meant to be comforting.
How is that comforting? Think about it this way.
If your salvation depends on you, on your good
behavior, your prayers, your ability to stay
faithful, you can never be sure. You might have
a bad day and die. You might lose your faith.
It's all on your shoulders. Right. But if your
salvation depends entirely on God's choice made
before the universe began, then it is unshakable.
It's secure. It takes the burden off the human
and places it on God. It was a doctrine of assurance
for anxious refugees. I see. It's about sovereignty.
God is in control even when the world is burning.
Absolute sovereignty. That is the keynote of
Calvinism. And quickly on the sacraments. We
know Luther said Christ is physically present
in the bread. Zwingli said it's just a symbol
of memorial service. Where did Calvin land? He
tried to find the middle ground. He rejected
the physical presence. He said Christ's body
is in heaven. But he rejected the empty symbol
idea, too. He taught a spiritual, real presence.
What does that mean? He argued that by the power
of the Holy Spirit during the Eucharist, the
believer is lifted up to commune with Christ
in heaven. It's a mystical union. It's food for
the soul, not the stomach. Got it. So we're moving
into the final years, part seven, legacy. After
Servetus and after the Libertines are finally
crushed in a failed riot in 1555, Calvin finally
wins the political battle in Geneva. Yes. The
last decade of Calvin's life was relatively peaceful
politically, and he turned his attention to his
other great passion, education. He founded the
college Calvin and the Academy, which became
the University of Geneva. This is huge. He believed
that to be a good Christian, you had to be educated,
not just in Bible, but in science, logic, grammar,
rhetoric. He wanted an educated laity. This connects
to the impact on the world. The outline mentions
democracy and capitalism. Let's unpack that.
How does a guy who ran a strict consistory help
create democracy? It seems contradictory. It
comes back to his view of human nature. Because
we are all idle factories, and in his view, totally
depraved, no single person can be trusted with
absolute power. Not a king, not a bishop, not
a pope. So you need checks and balances. Exactly.
Calvin favored a mixed government elements of
democracy and aristocracy. He believed magistrates
should be elected to check the power of kings.
This idea traveled to Scotland with John Knox,
to England with the Puritans, and eventually
to America with the founding fathers. So the
U .S. system of checks and balances has DNA from
Geneva. It absolutely does. That is mind -blowing.
The founding fathers were reading their Bibles,
or at least reading people who read Calvin. This
is Max Weber's famous theory. Unlike the medieval
church, which viewed profit with suspicion and
elevated the monk as the ideal, Calvin taught
that secular work is a vocation. A calling. A
calling from God. Whether you are a shoemaker,
a banker, or a street sweeper, your work is an
act of worship. Doing it well is an act of worship.
So excellence is holiness. Yes. And crucially,
unlike Luther, who hated usury lending money
at interest, Calvin allowed it. He realized that
in a commercial economy, you need credit to start
a business. He allowed interest with strict regulations
to protect the poor. This opened the door for
modern finance in Protestant countries. He also
had top missionaries, right? He wasn't just hoarding
this truth in Geneva. He was running a command
center. He sent over 100 ministers back into
France. These men were... essentially secret
agents. They entered France knowing they might
be burned at the stake. They used fake names.
They traveled at night. And the movement grew
massively, the Huguenots. By the time Calvin
died, there were thousands of Protestant churches
in France. It's tragic and inspiring. So how
does it end for Calvin? He worked himself to
death, literally. By his 50s, he was a wreck.
He had migraines, kidney stones, gout, hemorrhoids,
and eventually tuberculosis. He was in constant,
agonizing pain. But he kept going. He kept writing
and preaching. He even dictated his final revisions
of the Institutes while shivering with fever.
Sheer determination or stubbornness? Both. He
preached his last sermon in February 1564. He
had to be carried to the church in a chair. He
died on May 27, 1564 at age 54. He burst a blood
vessel in his lungs while talking. And the grave.
This is a fascinating final detail. This is the
perfect ending to his story. He gave strict instructions.
He wanted no headstone, no monument. He was buried
in a common grave in the Cimetia del Roi. He
was terrified of idolatry. He didn't want his
followers to turn his grave into a shrine. He
didn't want people lighting candles for St. John
Calvin. He wanted all the glory to go to God.
To this day, we don't know exactly where he lies.
There's a small stone there now with JC on it,
but it's just a guess. That is a powerful final
statement. Don't look at me. Look at him. It
is the ultimate act of self -effacement. So let's
wrap this up. We started with a caricature of
a joyless dictator. And what we found was a brilliant,
anxious, driven refugee who loved his wife, debated
deeply, made some terrible mistakes like Servetus,
but ultimately built a worldview that shaped
the modern West. A man who wrote about the dreadful
power of God, but also found deep comfort in
it. A man who was terrified of chaos, so he built
a system of order. Here's a provocative thought
to leave you with. Calvin's greatest fear was
idolatry people worshipping things other than
God. Yet he created a movement, Calvinism, that
is often so rigid, so focused on the man's system,
that it sometimes eclipses the mystery he was
trying to point to. Did he succeed, or did he
become the very idol he warned against? That
is the question every ism has to answer. But
one thing is for sure, you can't ignore him.
And a call to action for you listeners. Next
time you see a system of checks and balances
in your government or you feel that drive to
do your work with excellence just for the sake
of it, take a moment to think of the lawyer from
Noyon. You might be more Calvinist than you think.
Indeed. Thanks for diving deep with us. We'll
see you next time.