The following editorial is first in a series of five about John Calvin. Please check back for follow-up articles.

It is much easier to mock and ridicule John Calvin than it is to read him and seriously consider his insights in the light of Scripture. That is why today there is no shortage of disinformation about the man and his teachings. In some sectors of Christianity vilifying him has almost become a sport.

I well recall seminary professors who dismissed Calvin and his writings as irrelevant because, as they asserted, “he burned at the stake those who disagreed with him” or “he was an authoritarian tyrant who ruled Geneva with an iron fist” or “he baptized babies.” Further, students were warned against imbibing his theological insights lest we become like him in all of these ways.

Those accusations typify the conflation of myth and truth that fills the thoughts of many when they think of Calvin. Yes, he advocated paedobaptism, but he hardly ruled the city of Geneva, not even being granted citizenship until five years before his death. Regarding the death of the heretic Servetus, Calvin cannot be exonerated for his part in that sad, heinous act. But it is stupefyingly simplistic to overlook the fact that Calvin was a man of his times and his times were brutal.

Even today there are some Baptist leaders and teachers who seem intent on keeping caricatures of Calvin alive and whose warnings about the man and his doctrine border on the apocalyptic. These modern alarmists have little in common with the rich stream of Baptist heritage that viewed these matters in a completely different light. In his magisterial Baptist Encyclopedia, William Cathcart numbers Calvin among “the greatest workers in Christ’s vineyard”[1] and the great Baptist champion, Charles Spurgeon, writes, “The doctrine which I preach is that of the Puritans: it is the doctrine of Calvin, the doctrine of Augustine, the doctrine of Paul, the doctrine of the Holy Ghost.”[2]

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