Genesis 1-11 (Reformation Commentary on Scripture)
"This volume is an example of the current trend in biblical scholarship that favors a theological interpretation of Scripture over a purely historical-critical analysis of the text. This new approach encourages pastors and theologians to learn once against to read the Bible as the church's book revealing God's Word to the world. "John Thompson, the editor of this volume, has compiled selections from the Reformers' commentaries on the first eleven chapters of Genesis that exhibit the practice of theological exegesis. As such, they are markedly in sync with the patristic doctrines of Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy. "As precritical biblical theologians, the Reformers obviously did not have at hand the literary and historical methods of modern biblical criticism. Yet, such a lack did not prevent them from gaining a profound understanding of what God intended to reveal in the book of Genesis about the creation of the world, the fall of humankind, the reality of sin as the backdrop to the history of redemption that culminated in the New Testament gospel of Jesus Christ. All the Reformers were united in a thoroughgoing christological reading of the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture. "This volume makes refreshingly clear the extent to which the Reformation interpreters of Genesis did not get bogged down in the kinds of fruitless squabbles so prevalent in subsequent Protestantism, say, between fundamentalism and modernism, creationism and evolutionism. The Reformers read and interpreted Genesis in search of what is theologically significant for the Christian faith and the preaching of the church. This volume will help contemporary believers in Jesus Christ and members of His church to do the same today." (Carl E. Braaten)"Thompson's commentary on Genesis 1-11 reminds me that our present debates are not as novel as we may assume, nor--despite their place in scientific and doctrinal history--were our Reformation predecessors less insightful, sophisticated or creative than we in their interpretation of biblical origins." (Bryan Chapell, chancellor, Covenant Theological Seminary)