Oldal 256 [256]
PÉTER PÁSZTOR
However, Marilynne Robinsons apologetic does not stop with this merely
fictional vindication — not that these two novels, both prize-winners, leave us
with any sense of want. She continued her apologetic endeavour in an essay
about Calvin, eye-catchingly entitled “Marguerite de Navarre” because a title
with Calvin in it would have been deterring. In this essay she seeks to delineate
the timeliness of the Reformer’s thought. Without going into the details of her
sustained argument, this has to do with “the unworthy soul in an unmediated
encounter with Christ, for all the world as if there were no other souls in the
universe whether more or less worthy, as if there were no time, no history,
certainly neither merit nor extenuation... the classic Calvinist posture”,° which
Robinson identifies with the rise of the modern, complicated self. The other
reason for her odd title is that she discovers this posture already in the poetry
of Marguerite de Navarre, who received Calvin in her court and probably in¬
fluenced him.
Of course, Robinson’s portrait has nothing to do with the usual clichéd view
of Calvin as a stiff-necked authoritarian, policing men’s thoughts — clichés
the Reformed Church I belong to has not always gone out of its way to dispel.
Indeed her Calvin is a mind of great breadth, profundity, humanist scholar¬
ship and openness, under whose influence Geneva became a thriving centre of
intellectual and spiritual inquiry and a haven of freedom in a Europe bleeding
in Counter-Reformation. Moreover, for all the totalitarian and authoritarian
claims, Calvin’s influence, as Robinson justly observes, undeniably furthered
democratic development, the institutions of the rule of law and free inquiry
—Icannot remember Nazism or Communism ever exerting this kind of influ¬
ence. Robinson also removes part of the blame for the burning of Servetus from
Calvin, arguing that it was not Calvin’s own, but the city’s collective decision,
made guardedly, upon consultation with other cities around, and that this
was the only major breach of morality by Calvin and Geneva. Indeed, grave
dogmatic concerns were to be tested: excusing Servetus with his Arianism
would have cut the Reformation movement off from twelve hundred years of
Trinitarian Christianity, and thereby the Reformation could not have made
any claim to mainstream Christianity. Indeed, Robinson is right, Europe was
not yet ready for religious tolerance, and it would be anachronistic to demand
it. Beautifully written, insightful, Robinson’s essay has done a great deal to
rehabilitate Calvin’s reputation.
5 ROBINSON, Marilynne, Marguerite de Navarre, in M. Robinson (ed.), Death of Adam: Essays on
Modern Thought, New York, Picador, 2005, 218.