This coming July 10th marks John Calvin’s 500th birthday, and there is a surge of Calvin resources washing ashore. Very few names and labels carry the stigma and power to polarize people than the name of John Calvin. People even gauge their degree of agreeement with Calvin’s soteriology numerically: 4 pointers, 4.5 pointers, 5 pointers and even a few 7 pointers (even though there are only 5 points).
The tragedy in all this is that we’ve lost the man for the ‘-ism’ that he’s become. When I first began to read Calvin (which I did because I didn’t want to be someone with an opinion about something I haven’t engaged with) I was surprised to find Calvin to be very easy to read, very insightful, and amazingly pastoral and gracious. He was far from what I expected.
If you are unfamiliar with Calvin the man or his theology, Monergism has compiled a large selection of audio resources on John Calvin and this thing we call Calvinism (also known as the doctrines of grace).
Monergism’s audio listings on:
Faith by Hearing 