It’s hard to imagine that John Calvin celebrated his birthdays with much gusto.

The guy was only 27 when he published his Institutes of the Christian Religion—an age at which a lot of people are living at home these days. (Granted, 27 was middle-aged in Calvin’s day. He died at 54.)

But Calvin’s 500th birthday, which falls out tomorrow (July 10), is being celebrated with a certain gusto by those who still appreciate Calvin’s complex, intensely pious, history-changing teachings.

Hundreds came to Boston this week for a four-day event to commemorate Calvin’s influence. Not Springsteen numbers, but not bad for a guy who lived half a millennium ago.

A five-day international symposium is underway in Geneva, the city where Calvin’s reformist ideas were famously put into action.

I plan to write this week’s FaithBeat column about Calvin’s remaining influence on the Reformed Protestant churches of the Lower Hudson Valley.

A blog from from the Geneva conference gives you a real taste for what modern Calvinist scholars are into. It’s not for everybody. A post from this morning—from Ray Pennings, a Calgary-based authority on “applied Calvinism”—starts with this:

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It’s late – a long Wednesday at the Calvin 500 conference has passed and I am feeling exhausted although edified by this day. The morning started with five academic papers as usual. Dr. George Knight led off with a paper on “Calvin as New Testament Exegete” which for a good portion, was an informative survey paper Calvin’s NT work concluding with some observations about the strengths and weaknesses of this work for use in the church today. The next two papers complemented each other well. Dr. R. Scott Clark spoke on “Calvin’s principle of Worship.” He was followed by Dr. Terry Johnson who read a paper written by Dr. Hughes Old on “Preaching as Worship in the Pulpit of John Calvin.” Both papers raised many profound insights, too many to atttempt to summarize here. Two samples:

“Piety in godliness is the result of attendance at public worship, preaching and the sacraments. It is meaningless to speak of righteousness without religion of which public worship is the highest expression. To avoid or neglect this is spiritual theft.” (wording not exact, but my notes from Clark.)

On the place of the sermon in the liturgy of the sevice, “There is a doxological intention in preaching. Preaching is both an answer and a call to prayer. The word is an answer to prayer and the prayer is an answer to the word. The sacrament is like a signature on a letter or a seal on a charter. That is why the sacrament should be administered without preceding word. Without the word preceding the sign, the sign has no meaning.” (wording not exacdt, but my notes from Olds.)

Dr. Henri Boucher followed with a paper on “Calvin the Frenchman” in which he documented the French influences in the life of Calvin and suggested some implications and Dr. William McCormish on “Calvin’s Children” in which he quite masterfully demonstrated the scope of Calvins influence, both from a geographic and sphere perspective.

Following the morning session, a number of us had the priviledge of touring the Reformation Museum. This evening was a time for worship again following a similar format as the previous evenings, but this time using a liturgy that was derived from John Knox’s 1556 Form of Prayers.