When Donald Trump talks about heaven, it’s hard not to wince. 

In a recent conversation with reporters, the President said, “You know, there’s no reason to be good. I want to be good so you can prove to God you’re good so you go to that next step, right?” He was not joking, and this is not his only similar comment on heaven. In Trump’s mind, heaven works like his businesses do: a merit-based system, secured by achievement, negotiated by confidence, rewarded by success. It’s the prosperity gospel — problematic in and of itself — stripped of its preachers and sold at political rallies on cheap hats. This is self-righteousness with a steeple on top. And it’s the exact kind of thing John Calvin spent his days tearing down. 

For the great reformer John Calvin, the idea that mere human works can earn heaven wasn’t just bad theology — it was blasphemy. “… Justification if dependent on works,” wrote Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “cannot possibly stand in the sight of God, it must depend solely on the mercy of God and communion with Christ, and therefore on faith alone.” For Calvin, grace was not a pat on the back for the temporally accomplished, it was the rescue of the helpless. Salvation was not a deal that God struck with the deserving — it was an act of mercy for those who knew they weren’t. 

Trump’s “I’ve done great things” theology leaves no room for grace because it leaves no room for God. It assumes that divine favor works like political favor: transactional, performative and earned. But God doesn’t cut deals. He saves freely, entirely by His own will. Calvin wrote that “the human heart is a perpetual factory of idols.” Trump’s idol is his own reflection — he is a man that does not kneel before God or man because he is already justified in his own head. 

And yet, his view of heaven is not the President’s only heresy. At Charlie Kirk’s recent memorial event, Trump stood before the world and boasted, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.” He then apologized to Erika Kirk, who had — just moments before — forgiven the man who slaughtered her husband. When the President said that he hated his enemies, the applause was loud, but the irony was louder, and John Calvin would have been appalled at this spiritual rot. Calvin’s entire moral message rested on the fact that grace saves us but also transforms us — that the forgiven heart becomes a forgiving heart. According to Calvin and the broader reformation, Trump’s faith would be reflected in his works and words. None of the gospel is present in crowing that he hates his enemies. 

Trump’s message preaches salvation without repentance, strength without humility, victory without virtue. His rhetoric baptizes hate and calls it courage. It’s Christianity without Christ — and Calvin would have smelled it out instantly. 

Calvin understood that the true mark of faith in Christ is not achievement but submission. The believer’s glory is self-denial, not self-promotion. “We are not our own,” he wrote in The Institutes, “therefore let us forget ourselves and our own interests as far as possible. We are God’s, to him, therefore; let us live and die.” Trump’s world, and all too often the world of his most vociferous Christian supporters, is built on the opposite: we are our own, and God will approve whatever we do next.

That’s not reformed theology. That’s rebellion against God and it is sloppily disguised as faith. 

In the end, Trump’s words about heaven and hatred reveal more than confusion — they reveal the death of reverence. A man who believes he can earn heaven has never truly seen his need for it. John Calvin knew that. After all, he spent his life reminding the proud that their pride was killing them. 

America doesn’t need more hate or self-proclaimed saints. It needs what Calvin needed, what every sinner needs — it needs to be conquered by God’s grace.