A Recent French Reformed Theologian: Auguste Lecerf -- By: Thomas G. Reid, Jr.

Journal: Reformed Presbyterian Theological Journal
Volume: RPTJ 03:2 (Spring 2017)
Article: A Recent French Reformed Theologian: Auguste Lecerf
Author: Thomas G. Reid, Jr.


A Recent French Reformed Theologian:
Auguste Lecerf

Thomas G. Reid Jr.

Librarian and Registrar
Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Introduction

Around 1930, Auguste Lecerf opened the door of his apartment on the Left Bank of Paris to find a female professor standing before him. She was interested in talking with someone about Calvinism, and a friend had suggested that she seek out Lecerf, whom the friend termed “the last of the French Calvinists”.1 But strikingly, Lecerf has proved to be, not the last of the French Calvinists, but the first of the modern French Calvinists.

Lecerf’s Life

Ironically, Auguste Lecerf was born, not in France or in a French colony, but in London, England, and did not have a drop of French blood in his veins. His mother, Elisa Romenetti, had a British and Italian ancestry. His father was a Scottish nobleman, with whom his mother had an affair while she and her husband took refuge in England after they participated in the ill-fated Paris Commune of 1871. Lecerf was born on 18 September 1872, and his mother’s husband, René Lecerf, permitted Auguste to use his name.

Auguste Lecerf’s parents were not simply irreligious; they were consciously anti-clerical and atheistic. To their dismay, they discovered that Auguste was plagued by religious questions. “Why”, he would ask, “do the church bells ring?” When they could not answer his question, Auguste would burst into tears.2

The Lecerf family took advantage of an amnesty and returned to Paris. There, Auguste’s religious interest took a serious turn. At the age of twelve, he passed a Protestant Sunday School in session. Entering, Auguste was challenged by the message of the teacher. Later, Auguste purchased a Bible, and began to read it.3 Years later, he was to confess that it was on reading Romans 9 through 11 that we was converted to Christ,4 which is not so surprising when one considers that his father’s family was Jewish.

As a teenager, Auguste Lecerf was browsing along the banks of the Seine River in Paris, when he spotted a worn copy of Calvin’s magnum opus, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Perusing the book, he felt drawn to its clear teaching on divine sovereignty, just what had struck

him several years before in reading Romans.

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