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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 influenced 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 scholarship 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 influence. 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.
