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Ultimately. Norton-Taylor shows, it was ideas that ruled Calvin and those around him. In God's Man those ideas are given a human dimension. The reader encounters Calvin's doctrines and doubts tossed in a mind as agonized as his tubercular body. The godfather of capitalism assures a rich man that wealth is part of God's plan rather than a sin—but at the same time condemns gouging employers and supports strikes. In one fascinating intellectual exercise, Norton-Taylor offers his own version of a Calvin text, the reformer arguing with himself in verse about predestination: the doctrine that God has foreordained the salvation or damnation of each man from the beginning of time.
John Calvin died at 54, after a long and tormenting illness. The man who had sought to impose his will on the world had a peculiar last request: he wanted to be buried in an unmarked grave. The wish was respected. Today no one knows the great reformer's final resting place. But the book offers an epitaph: "He meant what he said." The reverse is true for this imaginative biography: Norton-Taylor performs the considerable task of saying what Calvin meant.
—Mayo Mohs