Sermons on Genesis, Chapters 11 to 20, by John Calvin, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 917 pages, £20.00, obtainable from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
This is a second volume of sermons on Genesis which Calvin preached in St Peter’s Church to the citizens of Geneva, from 24 January to 15 May 1560. They are numbered 50 to 97 and, as was the case with the first volume, (see The Free Presbyterian Magazine for January 2010) they are here translated into English for the first time by Dr Rob Roy MacGregor.
Those sermons take us on in Genesis from the dividing of the tongues at Babel to the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and are of a straightforward expository nature. Calvin, with his most fertile mind, brings out lesson after lesson from those passages in a very clear and practical way. His method is
perhaps best explained by Dr MacGregor in his very helpful Introduction: “Calvin, when preaching on Genesis 11:31-12:2 and speaking of Abraham’s difficulty in leaving his own people and possessions in faithful obedience to God, provides a partial summary of his own preaching, for he always understands that the Old Testament serves to instruct the Church: ‘Let us learn from this passage . . . that when we serve God, our lives will be filled with many struggles. If we do not sense them right away, they will come eventually. So if hypocrisy is not to get the better of us, let each of us enter into ourselves, to the deepest part, and consider the things that are required for obedience to God and the obstacles the world provides, those things that are in our very selves, for no greater resistance is to be found than the resistance found in our inner selves’ (pp 52-53).
“Those words show Calvin is aware that as we confront the internal and external problems of ordinary life, our resident self is in a very real sense our worst enemy and that our success in Christian living depends upon sincere and intentional obedience to God’s will and call, irrespective of the material, physical and emotional demands that are made, ‘for we will never serve God without a struggle’ (p 79).”
In reviewing these most edifying sermons, two areas were found especially helpful. The first was where Calvin comments on Abraham being justified by faith. He has no fewer than four sermons on justification but we confine ourselves to one quotation: “Abraham . . . already had the advantages of all virtues; he had renounced himself in order to yield fully to God. So it seems he could have some righteousness, if such existed in a living creature. And yet his faith was accounted to him as righteousness. From that Paul concludes there were no works to justify him. And when did he not have any works? After working enough to be able to serve as a pattern for all angelic virtues, in charity, in long-suffering, in obedience to God, in piety. In short he stripped himself of all affections to be fully in conformity with God’s righteousness. After doing all that, he still had nothing to boast of, as Paul says (cf Romans 4:2). He had to remain silent until he was justified by faith (cf Romans 3:19)” (pp 325,326).
The second area that was found especially helpful was Abraham’s question in his plea for Sodom, “Wilt Thou destroy the righteous with the wicked?” (Gen 18:23). In commenting on how the righteous often seem to suffer for the sins of the wicked, Calvin says, “In fact, it is like threshing grain in the barn. The flail passes over the straw and over the grain. Both straw and grain are struck, but afterwards the wheat is gathered up and the straw is thrown on the dunghill. And then the wheat is winnowed. It is thrown into the air to remove the useless straw, but the grain is preserved. Thus our Lord will cause
the flails to pass over the good, who are like the good grain; and He will also cause the wicked to undergo the same, like the straw, and on the face of it every thing will be confused, but the outcome will show He has not forgotten His own. So that comparison is true when it is well understood. God would have to renounce Himself if He destroyed the good along with the wicked.”
This is just a very small sample of the treasures to be found in those sermons. The only small thing the reviewer found to be rather irritating was the frequent use of slang expressions. Perhaps the blunt language of Calvin to the people of Geneva could best be brought out by these expressions and, as Calvin himself puts it, “when we come to preaching, we are not to seek to be soothed or stroked or have our ears tickled with quaint speculations, but [we are] to allow the preacher to get under our skin, so we will be pierced, cut to the quick, and deeply wounded, and have to take bitter medicine and sometimes pass through fire and searing reproaches so that everything will be cut off from the corruption in us; otherwise, there would be no Christianity in us” (p 406). However, for those of us not used to such phrases they can be somewhat irksome!
That apart, we highly commend this volume and heartily concur with the translator: “These sermons will provide Christians at all levels of spiritual development with important insights and emphases for preaching, teaching, and living the truth of God’s Word as revealed in the book of Genesis and beyond” (p xi).
(Rev) W A Weale
Trembling for the Ark of God, James Begg and the Free Church of Scotland, by James W Campbell, published by the Scottish Reformation Society, paperback, 134 pages, £7.95 from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
James Begg was one of the most prominent Free Church ministers of the nineteenth century. As the leader of the Constitutional party in the Church, he fought hard, though ultimately unsuccessfully, to prevent the Church from drifting away from its biblical foundations. Mr Campbell is a minister of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in America. Interestingly, he first realised Begg’s importance in Scottish Church history through reading the History of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
This book provides much more analysis of Begg and his position than is possible in the History. The first and longest chapter concerns “The Constitution of the Free Church of Scotland” and highlights Begg’s part in opposing constitutional drift, in conjunction with others such as John Kennedy, George Smeaton, Hugh Martin and William Nixon, who are specifically mentioned as fellow leaders. Though Begg died in 1883, the author continues to trace the declension in the Free Church on to the formation of the Free Presbyterian
Church in 1893, and beyond. This chapter is helpful for an understanding of the important events in Scottish Church history in the second half of the nineteenth century (however, the author’s date for the conclusion of the Free Church legal case is a year out; it should be 1904).
A chapter follows on Begg’s attitudes to “Social Problems and Their Reform”. The main points described are his advocacy of better housing for the working class and his opposition to the payment of seat rents in churches. These were certainly important issues, but one does question if, as a minister, he ought to have become so heavily involved in the more secular aspects of such matters.
A third chapter highlights his response to “The Romanist Threat”. Here the author leans heavily on Begg’s A Handbook of Popery. In reviewing chapter 3 of this volume, the author states, “Begg came to the heart of the matter when he asserted that Popery, not only standing in contrast to the Christianity of the New Testament, was also a corruption of the true rule of faith”. Begg did so because “the Church of Rome denied the sufficiency of the Word of God as the final arbiter in all matters of religious controversy, and in its place substituted a very different standard of appeal, that of the Church itself”.
A final chapter, “Begg and the Historians”, points out that “history has not been kind to James Begg” and particularly blames the standard biography of Robert Rainy for this. Mr Campbell concludes the chapter thus: “The historians rightly judge that Begg cannot be separated from Calvinism, the Establishment Principle, and anti-Romanism. For this reason they criticise the man, for they believe such principles to be false. But what if the principles are true? Then Begg becomes a stalwart hero instead of an outdated advocate of lost causes.”
This is not an attempt to write a full biography of Begg. A two-volume biography was written after his death but it can hardly be described as successful; C H Spurgeon commented that it was a case of “a man buried beneath a pyramid of documents”. It would be good if this small volume would be used to draw fresh attention to a godly minister who was a stalwart defender of scriptural principles and to encourage others to maintain a consistent witness to truth today.
It is our duty to be happy, because happiness lies in contentment with all the divine will concerning us.
“There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved,” but the name of Jesus. God has said it, and since our salvation can come only from God, there can be no other. What folly for us to think of finding another way than that which the wisdom of God devised, or of trusting another way than that which His power has executed!
George W Bethune
Protestant View
The Royal Succession
The news that a royal baby is expected (DV) has led to fresh calls for changes to the Act of Settlement. The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says that an agreement made by Commonwealth leaders in Perth, Australia, last year means that the child will be heir to the throne irrespective of its sex. Perhaps Mr Clegg is correct in this statement but one would have thought that parliamentary decisions ought to be necessary in the various nations over which a future monarch would reign, rather than a mere “agreement in principle”. This casual attitude to ancient constitutional laws and practices is one of the many indications of pride, folly and blindness among our rulers. Furthermore, the rules of inheritance up till now have been in accordance with biblical teaching on the roles of men and women whereas the proposed new arrangement would ignore and further undermine that teaching.
It is also proposed that the monarch should in future be allowed to marry a Roman Catholic. This is so obviously a halfway-house to having a Roman Catholic monarch that comment is unnecessary. The Bill of Rights of 1689 stated that “it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince”, and it would be found by experience that exactly the same is true today. Britain deserves, for her ingratitude to God, to be put through that experience again, but we pray that the Lord in His mercy will prevent it. DWBS