Calvin’s Sermons on Genesis 1-11 – A Review by John Brentnall

How thankful to God we should be for preserving these priceless sermons¹ and providing a translator who offers us ‘a quite marvellous gift’ (John R. de Witt). While reading them, we are conveyed back in time to St. Pierre in Geneva, where we hear this amazing man expounding and applying the Book of Beginnings with extraordinary energy and skill.

Here too is no ‘theistic evolution,’ no speculative ‘gap theory,’ no ‘priestly document,’ no poetic idea of how man should stand in awe of the impersonal power behind the universe, no Jewish fiction based on Babylonian legend, no ‘textual redactor’ putting his own emendations into Moses’ mouth, no ‘documentary hypothesis’, no ‘Big Bang’ chance philosophy, but a plain, vigorous and God-honouring exposition of the wonder of creation out of nothing in six literal days, the awfulness of man’s rebellion, and God’s righteous judgments in the Flood, Babel crisis and scattering of the nations.

What a privilege to hear such glorious and profound truths taught in such unscholarly everyday terms! How perceptive is Calvin in showing us the contradiction at the core of our fallen nature: our insatiable desire to know, and our deep-seated unwillingness to know God! How sharply he rebukes unbelieving philosophers as ‘those who think of themselves as wise enough to teach everybody else,’ yet in teaching aim ‘to destroy the article of our faith that says God is the Creator!’

No wonder that we enthuse over this precious volume. The debate on origins is as lively as ever it was, and here is the answer! Buy it! Read it! Digest it! And with God’s blessing you are bound to be the richer!