Sarah's problem, in Calvin's estimation, was that she believed the promise of God. Or at least, that was part of her problem -- part, that is, of what actually drove her to let those very strange words pass the threshold of her lips: "Go, sleep with my slave" (Gen. 16.2; NIV). There's no question,...

According to President Barack Obama, "we are all more free" as a result of the Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage last month -- a claim that disturbed me slightly more than images of the White House bathed in rainbow-colored light in celebration of that decision. Obama's claim,...

The fine team of scholars working around the clock at Lutheran Satire have unearthed footage detailing the late Victorian era origins of Children's Church. If you're not already familiar with Lutheran Satire, you probably should stop whatever you're doing and bring yourself up to speed on their...

Calvin assumes that Abraham's divorce from his nephew Lot (Gen. 13.8-9) caused the eminent patriarch considerable pain. "There is no doubt," the Reformer writes, "that the wound inflicted by that separation was very severe, since he was obliged to send away one who was not less dear to him than his...

Scripture's account of Terah and Abraham's departure from Ur of the Chaldeans for Canaan (via Haran) presents Calvin with a difficulty. In Genesis 11.31 it appears that Terah takes the initiative in quitting Chaldea for the greener pastures of some other place. In Genesis 12.4 it appears that...

On May 6 th , 1527 -- 488 years ago today -- military troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, sacked the ecclesiastical capital of Western Christendom, la città eterna , Rome. Sacking Rome was the "thing to do" (as they say) for much of Western history. Everybody who was anybody did it at some...

"Many things which are now seen in the world are rather corruptions of it than any part of its proper furniture. For ever since man declined from his high original, it became necessary that the world should gradually degenerate from its nature." So wrote Calvin in his commentary on Genesis 2, with...

"I come to the right of interpreting [the Bible], which they arrogate to themselves.... It is theirs, they say, to give the meaning of Scripture, and we must acquiesce." Thus Calvin summarizes the fourth and final point of Trent's teaching on Scripture. Trent's words were as follows: "No man... [...

Follow the links to read the introduction and part one of this series. "In forming a catalogue of Scripture," Calvin writes, "they [the Roman Catholic Council of Trent] mark all the books with the same chalk, and insist on placing the Apocrypha in the same rank with the others." Thus Calvin...

I intend to offer, over the next several weeks, a four part series on Calvin's response to Rome's doctrine of Scripture as discovered in the fourth session of the Council of Trent. It's my impression that very few Protestants today -- even the confessing kind -- have informed views on what Rome...

So wrote Luther to Erasmus in his Bondage of the Will . Few if any phrases from Luther have been more misunderstood. One regularly sees Luther's words invoked to emphasize the transcendence , the otherness, of God. Luther criticized Erasmus, it is assumed, for failing to grasp God's freedom and...

We tend, perhaps, to think of divine love as something akin to, albeit much greater than, human love. We tend, in other words, to assume that God's sentiments towards us are much bigger and stronger than, but fundamentally similar to, the sentiments we feel towards our most cherished friends and...

Our local veterinary clinic -- where our dog, for reasons I'd rather not relate, is not welcome -- has a letter board on their grounds which typically displays humorous messages about animals. The message on display earlier this week caught my attention as I was driving to work. It read: "If cats...

The flood waters having receded, and Noah and family having disembarked from the ark, it was back to business as usual on earth in a number of discernable ways. Thus we see, firstly, the restitution of the creation ordinance of marriage (Gen. 9.1), and, at least by Calvin's reckoning, a rather...

As is generally known, the Scottish reformers took a dimmer view of Christmas festivities than their continental peers. When Knox and company drafted the ( First ) Book of Discipline for the newly Reformed Kirk, they identified Christmas -- along with "holy days of certain saints" and "fond feasts...

In Calvin's judgment, the biblical story of Noah's ark constitutes "history" in the proper sense of the term (i.e., it happened more or less as described). Calvin is quite concerned, however, to emphasize to his readers that God played an active role -- in the particular form of miraculous...

"I can drive no man to heaven or beat him into it with a club." So observed Luther on March 11th, 1522, in a sermon to Wittenberg parishioners. Though his point was rather obvious, Luther felt compelled to make it because in his absence from Wittenberg during the preceding ten months, certain...

Before we bid October 2014 adieu , and partly in recognition of today being "Reformation day," let me draw attention to the fact that this month marks the 485 th anniversary of the Colloquy of Marburg -- that famous event in 1529 where Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli met and agreed to disagree on...

"The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose" (NASB). It is not entirely obvious who the parties ("sons of God" and "daughters of men") to the historical event (or rather historical crime, cf. Gen. 6.3) thus described in Gen...

It's well known that Calvin frowned upon religious images in churches and the use of musical instruments to accompany singing in the corporate worship of God. Religious artwork in churches served, he believed, to distract worshipers from those "pictures" of Christ and his redeeming work which God...

Calvin takes as given the historicity of Adam and Eve and the events surrounding their creation and fall. He rebukes, on this score, the 3rd century theologian Origen and "others like him" who -- finding little of value in Adam and Eve's historical personages -- "took refuge" in allegorical...

Calvin thinks none too highly of persons who covet the lives of pigs and dogs. It seems to have been a considerable problem in his day; he refers in his comments on Genesis 3 to the "well-known complaints" of persons who consider the lot of "swine and dogs" ( porci et canes ) in life preferable to...

We tend towards one of two extremes in our attitudes towards work: either we make too little of it, or we make too much of it. We make too little of work when we regard it with contempt, when we treat it as an evil -- albeit a necessary one since it supplies the financial resources necessary to...

Many thanks to the fine folk at Ref21 for inviting me to contribute to the website. I'm intending to launch, in a day or two, a series of posts reflecting upon bits and pieces of Calvin's Genesis commentary. Several weeks ago I decided to read through the entirety of Calvin's commentary set--not so...