A Life of John Calvin

Examines Calvin's life and his influence, his theology and his political thought, and his impact on the social and political legislature of New England. It also traces Calvin's remarkable impact on the development of modern Western attitudes to work, wealth, civil rights and capitalism. History occasionally produces figures whose influence on their own and successive generations is immense. Marx, Freud and Lenin had such an influence, and so, Alister McGrath argues, does John Calvin. This book provides a fresh and lucid exploration of Calvin's life and influence, his theology and his political thought, and his determining of the course of European history. It traces Calvin's remarkable impact on the development of modern Western attitudes to work, wealth, civil rights, capitalism and the natural sciences. Published to wide critical acclaim in hardback and now available in paperback, this ground-breaking study of Calvin will be welcomed by all concerned with an understanding of the shaping of modern western culture. The first biography of John Calvin since 1975 and the only life of the great reformer to analyse his impact on subsequent generations of theologians, politicians, economists and philosophers. This biography is theologically unbiased and is written as much for historians and general readers as for those interested in Calvin the Church reformer.