Religious Rebels 04 | John Calvin: Reformed the faith, ruled with fire

A French lawyer-turned-theologian who split from Rome — and built his own city of God.

John Calvin fled Catholic France to lead a new Protestant movement in Geneva during the 1500s. His ideas about predestination and the absolute authority of Scripture reshaped Christianity and inspired the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions. Yet under his rule, dissenters were exiled, imprisoned, and violently executed. 

Was he a reckless heretic or a visionary thinker centuries ahead of his time — and what does his death say about the danger of new ideas?

GUESTS:

• Randall C. Zachman Professor Emeritus of Reformation Studies, at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, after many decades at University of Notre Dame. 
• Professor Ben Myers at Alphacrucis University College in Brisbane - author of The Apostles’ Creed: A guide to the ancient catechism 
• Dr Constance Lee is Lecturer in Law at Adelaide University, and author of a forthcoming book Natural Law and the Nature of Government: John Calvin’s Constitutional Theology 

This is the fourth episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.