Happy Late Birthday, John Calvin

Calvin's 500th birthday was this year. There have been conferences and celebrations all over the world, and rightly so.

I'll steal wisdom from Ghandi here. Of Christianity, he said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians; they are so unlike Christ."

I feel the same way about John Calvin. He was a faithful pastor who wanted to preach the Bible. Yet many people who want to go by his name are arrogant knuckleheads. He would've hated the title "protestant" and loved the title "reformer." He was way more Catholic than Presbyterians and Catholics are willing to admit. Timothy George correctly states that Calvin was "a theologian of both/and, not either/or: divine sovereignty and human responsibility, written Word and living Spirit, the Church invisible and the Church congregational, already and not yet."

George's full article can be read here. He discusses Calvinism as it relates to capitalism, Calvin and Servetus, and three reasons Calvin's ideas are getting traction again today.