Happy Birthday, John Calvin?

I've gotten several emails this summer from places like Vision Forum, the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, and American Vision urging me to join them in celebrating John Calvin's 500th birthday. Calvin's life, they suggest, marks the most important event in Christian history since the resurrection. Why? Apparently because Calvin rediscovered and promoted the concept of salvation by grace. While this is certainly an important doctrine, there are some serious problems with all of this Calvin worship.

One problem is the man himself.

As the de facto "Pope of Geneva," he brought about the execution of Miguel Servetus, a Spaniard with whom he had theological disagreements. "If he ever comes [to Geneva]," Calvin wrote to a friend, "I shall never let him go out alive." Servetus did come to Geneva seven years later and was arrested while listening to Calvin speak. Calvin brought charges against him and was the chief witness during the trial. "I hope the verdict will call for the death penalty," Calvin wrote; and it did. Servetus was burned at the stake for heresy (over a pile of half-green wood, to prolong the burning).

What was Servetus' great crime? The two primary charges against him were 1) denying the trinity (being a Unitarian), and 2) renouncing infant baptism. While the former doctrine is certainly misguided, it does not warrant execution; and the latter is actually a Biblically-sound indictment of the likes of John Calvin who continued the Catholic practice of pedobaptism.

Historian Leonard Verduin, author of "The Reformers and their Stepchildren," writes: "The burning of Servetus--let it be said with utmost clarity--was a deed for which Calvin must be held largely responsible. It was not done in spite of Calvin, as some over-ardent admirers of his are wont to say. He planned it beforehand and maneuvered it from start to finish. It occurred because of him and not in spite of him. After it had taken place, Calvin defended it with every possible and impossible argument" (p. 51).

In summary, John Calvin used civil authority to murder someone with different theological views. Imagine if the pastor of your church had done the same. How could you justify it? Did the disciples take this approach? Did Jesus ever teach it? Of course not. We do, however, have a modern equivalent of this kind of behavior: it's called Islam.

A second problem with Calvin worship is the man's provenance. Like Zwingli and Luther he came from the Roman Catholic tradition. We call them "reformers," but do we ever stop to think what they were "re-forming" or "remaking"? They were remaking the Catholic model--Satan's counterfeit church. They did not abandon the model or embrace a purely Biblical model; they just tinkered with a few of the Catholic doctrines and kept the basic blueprint in place (state churches, infant baptism, "universal church," persecution of opponents, etc.). A more apt name for the "reformers" would actually be the "redecorators." Baptists should think twice before incorportating these redecorators into their worship narrative. The Baptists, as Spurgeon famously said, "did not commence our existence at the reformation, we were reformers before Luther or Calvin were born; we never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it...."

A third problem with all this adulation is the "man-centered" nature of it: John Calvin as some sort of heart throb for egg-headed seminarians. We've already seen how terribly awry things can go when we elevate an individual over an idea, when we succumb to the cult of personality. We need no better example than our current president. How many of our fellow Americans are hanging their heads sheepishly because they thought they were electing Tiger Woods, only to find out they were duped into electing a radical Marxist with a good marketing scheme. I think many Baptist pastors would feel the same way if they actually had a chance to spend some time with the "Pope of Geneva." If "God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10: 34) then why should we be?

A fourth problem is the reason given for the worship of Calvin. We hold him up because he purportedly rediscovered salvation by grace (as opposed to salvation by works). But that important doctrine had never died. It was taught by the Donatists, the Paulicians, the Waldensians, the Anabaptists--long before Calvin was born. This wasn't a "new" concept. It was in Scripture all along. Calvin didn't--as his fans claim--get Christianity back on track. He merely stumbled upon one of the doctrines taught by true churches for centuries; but sadly his followers persecuted those same churches while continuing to cling to the Catholic model.

So who's ready to join all those squeaky-clean salesmen and seminarians in celebrating Calvin's birthday? How about dressing up the kids like Reformers for Halloween? (I wish I were joking).