Rev. Terpstra is pastor of First Protestant Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan.

“For our salvation was a matter of concern to God in such a way that, not forgetful of himself, he kept his glory primarily in view, and therefore created the whole world for this end, that it may be a theater of his glory”—Consensus Genevensis, as quoted in The Theater of His Glory: Nature and Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin, Susan E. Schreiner, Labyrinth Press, 1991 (cf. Institutes of the Christian Religion, J.T. McNeill, Ed.; F.L. Battles, Transl., Westminster, 1960, 2 vols., I. v. 8, where Calvin also uses this term).

It is that theme of God’s glory that dominates Calvin’s thought concerning God’s work of creation. Calvin’s doctrine of creation is cast in beautifully positive terms and is therefore wonderful to explore. Though Calvin had to be polemical at times in his treatment of this doctrine (as Reformed theologians and believers still do!), the truth of creation was for the most part free of controversy in his time. Though the Protestants of the great Reformation did have controversies with Rome over the creation of man, specifically over the image of God in man, there was no conflict over the creation of the world in general. And so Calvin presented creation as a glorious work of God, revealing His power in making a well-ordered and perfectly good universe that proclaimed the glory and goodness of its Maker.

…Wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory. You cannot in one glance survey this most vast and beautiful system of the universe, in its wide expanse, without being completely overwhelmed by the boundless force of its brightness. …This skillful ordering of the universe is for us a sort of mirror in which we can contemplate God, who is otherwise invisible (Inst., I. v. 1).

Following the classic doctrine of the Christian church, Calvin taught that this world was not the product of blind chance or of any other power outside of God, but was the work of the triune God alone. In this he simply upheld the historic confession of the church, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” It was Calvin’s faith, as it is and must be ours, that God the eternal Father, through the Son as His eternal Word, and by the Holy Spirit as His powerful Breath, created all things visible and invisible.

Even though Calvin did not face the error of evolutionism in his day, he did confront other similar unbelieving notions about the origin of the universe. For example, he refuted the pagan Greek idea that matter is eternal—an idea that is at least still implied, if not taught, in modern evolutionism. In his commentary on Genesis he remarks on Genesis 1:1,

He moreover teaches by the word ‘created,’ that what before did not exist was now made; for he has not used the term yatsar, which signifies to frame or form, but bara, which signifies to create. Therefore his meaning is, that the world was made out of nothing. Hence the folly of those is refuted who imagine that unformed matter existed from eternity…. Let this, then, be maintained in the first place, that the world is not eternal, but was created by God (Commentary Upon the Book of Genesis, Transl. by Rev. J. King, Baker, 1979, p. 70).

This key point, that God created the world “out of nothing” (ex nihilo), silences the vain shouts of all those who defend evolutionary theories about how the universe came into being. Calvin would not be on the side of such “scientists.”

Further, at one point in the Institutes Calvin refers to those who “babble” about the universe being given life by some “secret inspiration.” He quotes the philosopher Vergil, who promoted this idea in some famous lines. But Calvin responds, “As if the universe, which was founded as a spectacle of God’s glory, were its own creator!” (Inst. I. v. 5). And at another point, in speaking of the glory of God evidenced in the human body, Calvin writes of those who nonetheless deny this divine handiwork, with words that ring strikingly true of today’s evolutionists:

How detestable, I ask you, is this madness: that man, finding God in his body and soul a hundred times,

on this very pretense of excellence denies that there is a God? …They set God aside, the while using ‘nature,’ which for them is the artificer of all things, as a cloak. …Here also they substitute nature for God (Inst. I. v. 4).

It should be clear from this that for Calvin there was no room for any evolutionary theory concerning the origin of the universe.

In this connection, a matter of great importance to every Reformed Christian should be what Calvin taught with regard to the days of Genesis 1. Did he view Genesis 1 as real history, with God’s work carried out in a chronological order, such that the six days of creation were ordinary, successive days of 24 hours? Or did he take this opening chapter of God’s Word to be poetry or some other type of literary framework to describe the creative work of God? Did he, in other words, allow for today’s framework and day-age theories, which would give room for some type of evolutionary development of the universe, even if it be controlled by God (theistic evolution)? And therefore, did Calvin believe that the universe was young or old?

In answering this, it is important to remember again that this was not as such a controversial question in Calvin’s time. At least not on this specific question of how the days of Genesis 1were to be interpreted. It was assumed that they were to be taken literally, i.e., as ordinary days of 24 hours. But Calvin did face this question in connection with another conflicting viewpoint. Augustine and other church fathers before him had taught that God’s work of creation was done “in a moment,” and that therefore it did not take God six days to create the world. In writing about this miraculous work of God, Moses, they argued, spread the work over six days for our instruction, but not because it actually took God that long to make the world.

Calvin took issue with this when he first came across the word “day” in Genesis 1:5:

Here the error of those is manifestly refuted, who maintain that the world was made in a moment. For it is too violent a cavil to contend that Moses distributes the work which God perfected at once into six days, for the mere purpose of conveying instruction. Let us rather conclude that God himself took the space of six days, for the purpose of accommodating his works to the capacity of men. …God applied the most suitable remedy (for our dullness, CJT) when he distributed the creation of the world into successive portions… (Genesis, p. 78).

As W. Robert Godfrey writes in his recent study on Genesis 1, in which he includes an appendix on “Calvin on Creation,”

He cannot be accused of accommodating to modern science…. Calvin does conclude in his study that

Genesis 1

is simple chronology and does see the days of creation as ordinary days (God’s Pattern for Creation: A Covenantal Reading of

Genesis 1,

P&R Publishing, 2003).

This is an honest but striking admission in view of the fact that Godfrey himself does not take Genesis 1:5 to refer to a day of 24 hours and leaves this question open to various interpretations (cf. pp. 28, 30), a fatal concession to those who want to defend a framework theory and an old earth in conservative Reformed churches in our day. Calvin firmly believed an early earth, based on his proper understanding of the days of Genesis 1.

But Calvin also believed that this present created order was not an end in itself. Its purpose was not just the glory of God in this material world with all its beauty; it also served the greater and higher purpose of the glory of God in the redemption of His people in Jesus Christ. It was in this created heaven and earth that sin and grace would be revealed. Calvin throughout his treatment of the doctrine of creation views this present world as the stage for the revelation of God’s program of salvation for His elect church. Always he relates the creation to God’s plan in Christ in the face of man’s fall into sin. That is true of his comments in the early part of Genesis, even before the account of the Fall. But it is also true of those special places in Scripture where God’s salvation plan is tied to Christ and creation (cf. his comments on Rom. 8:19ff.; Eph. 1:10ff., and Col. 1:15ff.). That means Calvin also believed the redemption of all creation in Christ. Not of all men, for reprobate men and angels are excluded from this gracious plan of salvation. But all the elect and all the elect angels, as well as the entire created world, will be gathered together in one in Christ. This is God’s plan and purpose with His creation. In this, too, He shows Himself to be a faithful Creator. And all of this serves the glory of God. That is the ultimate purpose of all things.

Because of this saving purpose of God in Christ, Calvin also taught that fallen man cannot attain to a true and saving knowledge of God apart from God’s gracious revelation of Himself in Christ through the gospel as set forth in Scripture. He makes this abundantly plain in the opening section of the Institutes. While Calvin teaches that all men have a natural, innate knowledge of God given them by God through the things He has made (Rom. 1:19-21), this knowledge is not saving, nor does it lead men to reach higher for the knowledge of God as Savior. He writes: “In this ruin of mankind no one now experiences God either as Father or as Author of salvation, or favorable in any way (no common grace here! CJT), until Christ the Mediator comes forward to reconcile him to us” (I. ii. 1).

In fact, Calvin shows that this natural knowledge that man has he totally corrupts, due to the presence of sin in him, just as Romans 1:21ff. teaches.

But although the Lord represents both himself and his everlasting Kingdom in the mirror of his works with very great clarity, such is our stupidity that we grow increasingly dull toward so manifest testimonies, and they flow without profiting us. …Sometimes we are driven by the leading and direction of these things to contemplate God…. Yet after we rashly grasp a conception of some sort of divinity, straightway we fall back into the ravings or evil imaginings of our flesh, and corrupt by our vanity the pure truth of God. …We forsake the one true God for prodigious trifles (I. v. 11).

This is what makes the revelation of God in Christ through the Holy Scriptures necessary, which Calvin goes on to treat in the Institutes.

…It is needful that another and better help be added to direct us aright to the very Creator of the universe. It was not in vain, then, that he added the light of his Word by which to become known unto salvation; and he regarded as worthy of this privilege those whom he pleased to gather more closely and intimately to himself (I. vi. 1).

This is the amazing grace and abundant mercy of God to us His people in Jesus Christ. For this gracious revelation of God we ought to thank and worship the Lord. For this wonderful mercy of God we will praise and serve Him everlastingly in the new heavens and earth.