Calvin the "terrible"

I've started to read DG's attractive reprint of Portrait of Calvin by T.H.L. Parker, originally published in 1954. Englishman Parker is still alive at age 92 and contributed a preface to this edition. I'm finding this a delightful book. I know delightful isn't a word that first comes to mind when thinking about the subject of John Calvin, but in Parker's hands the life and times of the man (not the legend) come alive. Nor is this the whitewashed treatment of an admirer, though Parker is one. Parker presents the "essential harmony of the man" along with "dissonances that spoil the harmony."

Parker would go on to write a full-scale biography of Calvin, but as the title indicates this is more of an introductory sketch. Any modern work on Calvin is almost obliged to address the popular caricatures and misconceptions about his life and thought. This Parker does in his typically witty way in the introduction.

This presentation may come, I hope, as a pleasant surprise to some who have always in their imaginations seen Calvin with horns and wreathed about with the incense of brimstone—those who, had they the organizing of Madame Tussaud's, would move his not very lifelike effigy from its present position in the Main Hall into the Chamber of Horrors. Perhaps I may be allowed two anecdotes to illustrate the irrational aversion against him among my brethren in the Church and also the popular ignorance of his position in church history.

A new clerical acquaintance and I were talking of John Knox. He was reminded of John Calvin.

"Calvin, now," he said, "he was terrible."

"Terrible," I asked, "how?"

"I mean Calvin," he said, "you know about Calvin, don't you?"

He plainly thought I had not caught the name. Calvin was terrible. No one, surely, who called himself a loyal Anglican could dissent from the verdict that Calvin was terrible.

"But why terrible?" I asked.

He found the question difficult. It was axiomatic that Calvin was terrible. But in what way, it was not easy to say, especially if one knew of him only by hearsay. But he was a strong-minded man and refused to be beaten.

"He was terrible," he replied firmly. And then, with inspiration, "I mean, look how bad-tempered he was."

Then there was the man in an evening class. Romans 3:21 and following was being expounded. The teaching of the Council of Trent was mentioned and also that of Luther and Calvin. He interrupted me at the name: "Calvin," he said, "he was all on about predestination, wasn't he?"

Bad temper and predestination! A gruesome picture, certainly, but rather too bad to be true. (pp. 21-22)

That makes me chuckle every time I read it because it's so like the picture of John Calvin that I grew up with, and that still persists today. Kudos to DG for making this book widely available once again!