Literary Calvinism

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“Many surrendered to, all were influenced by, the dazzling figure of Calvin . . . The fierce young don, the learned lady, the courtier with intellectual leanings, were likely to be Calvinists. When hard rocks of Predestination outcrop in the flowery of the Arcadia or the Faerie Queen, we are apt to think them anomalous, but we are wrong. The Calvinism is as modish as the shepherds and goddesses” (C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the 16th Century, p. 43).

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John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago

[Calvinism] was the creed of progressives, even of revolutionaries. It appealed strongly to those tempers that would have been Marxist in the nineteen-thirties. The fierce young don, the learned lady …

As I noted on another post, the full context of the quote leaves a very different impression than does reading just the carefully extracted sentences above.