Relocating To Elfland

“The Old Testament order in Israel was similar in many respects to the order of Ancient Near Eastern civilizations or Greece. In Israel as in Athens, the city and temple were seen at the center of the world. Everything moved centripetally toward the temple. Exile was the final and most severe curse of the Old Testament.

“At the heart of the gospel, however, is the announcement that this order of sacred center and profane distance has been destroyed. Instead of a single place for an [earthly] temple, the New Testament announces a heavenly temple, equally accessible from any point on earth. The commission of the Greater Joshua is not to enter the land in order to stay there; rather it is ‘Go, make disciples of all nations.’ The gospel further promotes the deep comedy of adventure because it declares that there is no chaos outside the city. Christ is Lord of all, and all things are, in principle, subdued to Him.” (Peter Leithart, Deep Comedy, p. 121)

“However primary the path of nonviolence is for the Christian, the peace of God’s kingdom is exhaustively described in Scripture, and it is the peace of a concrete condition of justice; it is neither the private practice of an ‘ethical’ individual, jealous of his own moral purity, nor the special and quaint regime of a separatist community that stands aloof from (in ill-concealed contempt for) its ‘Constantinian’ brethren. Where the justice of the kingdom is not present, and cannot be made present without any exercise of force, the self-adoring inaction of those who would meet the reality of, say, black smoke billowing from the chimneys of death camps with songs of protest is simply violence by other means, and does not speak of God’s kingdom, and does not grant its practitioners the privilege of viewing themselves as more faithful members of Christ’s body than those who struggle against evil in the world of flesh and blood where evil works. . . . The justice of God – the peace of God – can be found and fought for in the heart of history, for the kingdom has already come – the tomb is empty – and will come again; the battle has been won, and we must seek to prepare the earth for a victory that has already claimed us as its spoils.” (David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, pp. 341–42)

Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! Having lectured twice through the first eleven chapters of Genesis, I would have said these few pages lay the foundation for everything else in Genesis and all of scripture, and (as an obvious corollary) that all the major elements of the Christian “worldview” are seeded here as well. Recently, though, in sifting through some work by Meredith G. Kline and James Jordan (two of the more luminous contributors to Reformed biblical theology since Geerhardus Vos), I have seen as never before how a step (or misstep) in interpreting these early chapters can affect one’s reading of the entire Bible and the formulation of vast tracts of one’s theology.

Both Kline (here) and Jordan (here and here) assign pivotal significance (rightly, in my view) to the Flood account in Genesis 6–9. So massive was the transition that occurred in the Flood that it divided world history into two major epochs: the first running from creation to the Flood (what Kline, following 2 Peter 3:6, calls “the world that then was”), the second running from the Flood to the New Covenant (Jordan) or to the eschaton (Kline, “the world that now is”; cf. his Kingdom Prologue [hereinafter KP], pp. 8–13). I would highlight here the difference between the two men on the terminus ad quem of “the world that now is”; but for now we must occupy ourselves with other things.

Notwithstanding their agreement on the epochal significance of the Flood, Kline and Jordan offer radically different descriptions of the world that emerged from its waters. I will start with Kline.

Kline believes that after the Flood there was a “covenantal reestablishment of the common grace order” (KP, p. 244). This is obviously freighted language, and to understand what he means, we have to go back to his understanding of what occurred after the Fall of man (KP, pp. 153–60; by the by, anyone who wants to glimpse the roots of the Klinean biblical-theological program needs to read and re-read these pages). In his view, when God pronounced the “common curse” on the man and the woman in Genesis 3:16–19, there was also an announcement of the continuation of the world order and of certain common, temporal blessings that all men would enjoy. Here is an extended quote from Kline regarding the cultural side of this “common blessing”:

“Another benefit of common grace, besides the preservation of the natural order in a form that made a history of man on earth still possible, was the continuation, even though in modified fashion, of some important elements of the social-cultural order that had been established under the Creator’s covenant with Adam. This too was implicit in the announcement of the common curse. Thus, in the curse upon the woman (Gen 3:16) it is assumed that the marriage institution would continue as a divine appointment for human society. Moreover, the blessing of the Creator would rest on the marriage relationship in sufficient measure for its function as the institution for the propagation of human life to be fulfilled. There would be barrenness and pain, miscarriage and abortion, but there would be children. In spite of the common curse, by virtue of common grace there would be the “book of the generations of Adam” (Gen 5:1). Again, in the curse on the man (Gen 3:17-19) it is presupposed that man’s dominion over the earth would be continued and that here too divine blessing would be granted on man’s labor to such a degree that human life would be sustained and cultural satisfactions realized. There would be thorns and pests, drought and famine, toil unto death, the destiny that seemed to mock the meaning of it all, but meanwhile there would be bread as the staff of life and wine to make glad the heart of man. And in man’s settlements would be heard the sound of the forge and of music. The way the biblical narrative subsequently traces the significant beginnings of industry, the arts, and sciences in the Cainite communities (Gen 4:17ff.) underscores the commonness of common grace, the ungodly as well as the godly enjoying its benefits. Thanks to common grace, chaos would be averted; human life would retain societal structuring through the continuation of the institution of the family, afterwards supplemented by the institution of the state (Gen 4:15; 9:6).”

Completely absent from this description is any hint that it might make a difference whether the building of culture was done in obedience or disobedience to the Creator-King; the cultural side of the “common grace order” stands more or less on its own, as a kind of “neutral zone” shared by the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent alike. What Kline goes on to say next will make this explicit.

The common grace order, he says, “is common not only in the sense that its benefits are shared by the generality of mankind, the just and the unjust alike, but in the sense that it is nonsacred. Particular emphasis needs to be given to the fact that the political, institutional aspect of common grace culture is not holy, but profane” (KP, p. 155, emphasis mine). This is pretty strong, and of course Kline provides an exegetical argument. It is significant, he says, that when the Lord God

“republished the cultural ordinances within the historical framework of his common grace for the generality of fallen mankind, he did not attach his Sabbath promise to this common cultural order. The ordinance of the Sabbath was not reissued in the revelation of the common grace order either in Genesis 3:16-19 or in the covenantal promulgation of it in Genesis 9. This withholding of the Sabbath sign from common grace culture is a clear indication of the secular, nonholy character of that culture.”

Readers should look at how Kline goes on to parse this out, but his basic proposal is now clear: in the absence of the Sabbath from Genesis 3 (where he says a common grace order was instituted) and Genesis 9 (where he says the common grace order was resumed), we can (he says) see God’s intention that a legitimately non-holy sphere of human life exist to be shared in common by His people and His enemies.

Returning now to the Flood account and the covenant with Noah that followed (Gen 9:1–17), we are not surprised to hear Kline argue that this Noahic Covenant was

“not an administration of redemptive grace but of common grace. It did not bestow the holy kingdom of God on an elect, redeemed people. The revelation of this covenant came to Noah and his family and the covenant is said to be made with them, but they are addressed here, as were Adam and Eve in the disclosure of common grace and curse in Genesis 3:16-19, not in distinction from but as representative of the generality of mankind.” (KP, p. 245)

Precisely here Jim Jordan demurs (he would demur from a number of other things we have heard from Kline as well, but here the difference is especially stark). “The Noahic Covenant,” he says, “was not addressed to man as man, but to covenant-man, to the Church. The benefits and duties of the Noahic Covenant are not addressed to all mankind, but only to believers” (see his Biblical Horizons [hereinafter BH], No. 19). And, like Kline, he offers an exegetical argument:

“Notice first of all, that when Noah came off the Ark, he built an altar and offered of every clean bird and beast to the LORD. It was on the basis of that sacrifice, not on the basis of some generalized ‘common grace,’ that God stated that He would never again curse the ground on account of man. God said that He would refrain from cursing even though ‘the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.’ God had brought the Flood because the intent of man’s heart was only evil continually (6:5). God changes His approach to man’s sinfulness not because man has changed, but because of the sacrifice.”

There you have it: for Kline the absence of the Sabbath in Genesis 9 is all-controlling; for Jordan the presence of sacrifice is all-controlling. There’s a lot more to it, of course. If I had ample time and space, and didn’t fear exhausting my readers’ indulgence, I would expand on how this basic difference between Kline and Jordan relates to their variant readings of the significance of the rainbow; of the inclusion of animals in the covenant promise; and of Yahweh’s “confirming” with Noah (Hebrew: qum) a covenant that appears already to be in place, rather than “cutting” a new covenant (Hebrew: krt). But now to a brief closing word of commentary.

Without having done an exhaustive study of the matter, I think Jordan plainly has the better of the argument (which is not to endorse everything he develops from his exegesis). The family to whom the Noahic promises and mandates were delivered was a redeemed family; they were a household under the blood of sacrifice (Gen 8:20–22). Moreover, while the mandates to Noah and his household were qualified by the presence of sin, the similarity between these mandates and those delivered to Adam at creation (vis-à-vis Genesis 3) is such that one should be very careful about imposing on the former a “common grace” construction that did not apply to the latter. Put differently, if Adam was to discharge his commission in obedience to and fellowship with his Creator-King, it seems decidedly odd to say that Noah and his family were to discharge their commission “in the common grace mode” (KP, p. 251), i.e., their commission “was concerned with natural life, not with religious fellowship” (KP, p. 261).

I hope I have managed to present Kline’s and Jordan’s views accurately and fairly. Whatever one may think of their respective positions, they illustrate how much rests on the interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis, and what radically different visions of human life can arise from a disagreement in this portion of God’s Word.

I recently listened to a sermon by Dr. Tim Keller in which he said the reason for the frenetic pace of life and general exhaustion among urban dwellers is that they have come to the city in order to find themselves. It is different for the people of God, he said (preaching from Jeremiah 29:1–14). We come to the cities of the world having already been given a self in the gospel; so our labors in a city are those of loving service, not the exhausting pursuit of self-discovery and self-promotion.

I appreciate that Keller’s comments were focused on urban missions, but I want to draw attention briefly to his more general insight regarding a given identity. Readers of this blog know that I am passionately interested in the rising generation of Christ’s church (not least because I am a father of four), and I can think of no more basic problem among the youth of today’s Christendom than their nearly wholesale lack of functional Christian identity. This shows up in a myriad ways: they have no problem “yoking up” with unbelievers; they cannot live without the latest status symbol; their lives are every bit as dominated by consumerism as their pagan peers; they have little or no interest in deep relationships with prior generations of the church (witness their conversation and reading habits) or in preparing themselves to rear the generation to come; they neither understand nor enjoy the Christian scriptures; their Facebook pages are indistinguishable from those of teens who make no pretense of worshiping Christ; and so on and so on.

The reason for all of this is that, at a functional level, our youth have no clear sense of who their God has declared them to be, and thus no compelling interest in becoming who they actually are. (Now there is a pronoun pileup for you!) They lack a functional Christian identity.

But we cannot stop there. Say the word “identity” in the modern context, and immediately we all start thinking in individual terms: the issue of my “identity” addresses who I am. But is this really so? Is it not the case, rather, that my identity is entirely situated, so that I cannot know who I am without knowing where I am located (in space and in time), to whom I stand related, and what is the fundamental vision of life in which I (and my relations) are operating (call it a worldview, or a Weltanschauung)? Let me quote from Charles Taylor:

“The question [of identity] is often spontaneously phrased by people in the form: Who am I? But this can’t necessarily be answered by giving name and genealogy. What does answer this question for us is an understanding of what is of crucial importance to us. To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand.” (Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity, p. 27)

Taylor later speaks of “a frame or horizon within which things can take on a stable significance, within which some life possibilities can be seen as good or meaningful, others as bad or trivial.”

And this, in turn, begins to sound a bit like the way the Christian scriptures address identity. In the Bible, we learn that every human life is fundamentally defined by a relationship either with the first Adam or with the Last Adam (Christ Jesus). Every human being is either “in Adam” or “in Christ.” Every human stands in a relationship with the Creator-God that is defined either by Adam’s sin, curse, and death, or by Christ’s righteousness, blessing, and life. To use a metaphor coined by a friend of mine, these are two different “operating systems” in which every one of the various “programs” of human life functions (eating, drinking, education, sexuality, etc.); or to use Ridderbos’ phrase, they are two different “modes of existence”; so that two people may be doing the exact same thing (eating a salad, for instance) and yet be doing so within two totally different life-situations or contexts. One is eating as a righteous, forgiven, beloved child of God; the other is eating as a condemned enemy of God for whom the creature (the salad, in this case) is the “be all and end all.” They are worlds apart, these two people, while eating the same salad.

Once I know where I am situated – who my God is and how I am related to Him, who my people are and how I am related them, and what is the overarching story (or metanarrative) in which my tiny individual story is being written in this time and space – I can begin to figure out how to live.

Perhaps another metaphor may help us here. Biblically conceived, my life is not a story that I am making up as I go. My life is, rather, situated from the moment of my conception in the kingdom story God Himself is writing. Or to change the image slightly, I am given from conception a play script (theologians refer to it as the “covenant”) in which I am assigned a particular role (I have a unique spot in the dramatis personae); and I am to “put on” my costume and play that role by the script. I am told that, as a member of the covenant, I am “in Christ”; and I am to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” and make no provision for the old Adamic life (Rom 13:14). I am to “put off” all of the practices that naturally belonged to the “old self,” for the old self was itself put off when God placed me in His covenant and kingdom (Col 3:9–10). I am to “put on” all of the practices of the “new self” God has given me in His Son. Practice, practice, practice. And eventually, the role no longer feels unnatural; I have become what God has told me I am.

At the risk of being insufferably tedious, let me quote something I once wrote in another context (trying to relate all of this to the subject of Christian wisdom):

“Here perhaps is the genius of true wisdom. If it is the blight of folly (too often characteristic of youth) to be entirely absorbed with the self, and more narrowly still, in the present moment of the self, it is wisdom’s genius to view the self, and especially the moment, as a small and slightly significant part of a large and grandly significant whole. For the wise, every moment of the self stands ‘within’ a larger moment that itself stands within a grander series of moments – what we call a ‘history.’ Put another way, for the wise, each self-moment is part of a community-moment, which in turn is part of a historical movement (or better, a number of historical movements); and only as such does the self-moment retain significance.

“It is but a slight step from this to the idea that wisdom is inextricably grounded in narrative. The absence of a well-formed sense of narrative and a well-formed sense of identity in a community defined by a particular narrative, will usually explain the pervasive foolishness of youth. What is particularly frightening about this absence in the modern context is that modernity has, for many generations, self-consciously rebelled against the ancient narratives that once defined all human community. In bygone centuries, there existed religious narratives, or at least tribal and national narratives, that defined and shaped human community, and in which young ones were schooled. Now the religious narratives are simply ‘myths’; now the tribe is a ‘neighborhood’ in which all are functionally strangers, and the nationhood of nations is rapidly washing away into the global sea. Now the best one can hope for is a ‘Facebook community’ a year or two old, or perhaps a ‘reading community’ loosely built around the latest Twilight novel.

“The Christian scriptures are violently subversive of our modern foolishness. To us they present the grandest of narratives: the story of the kingdom of God stretching back to Eden, the story of God’s covenant community stretching back through Abraham to the creation-kingdom, and past that to the inner life of the Triune Creator. The surest way for us to impart wisdom to the youth of Christendom is to brand this story on their consciousness, resulting in what the Apostle Paul called sophrosune – sobermindedness. The ‘sober’ soul is aware; he has his wits about him; he is able to pull his head out of the present moment, to look about and orient himself to the larger community and story of which he is a part. He lives out of the wisdom and insight lavished upon God’s covenant people in Christ, a wisdom in which God has made known to us ‘the mystery of His will, according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth’ (Eph 1:8–10).”

I would love to go on to talk about how this concretely affects absolutely everything in daily life. There’s nothing impractical or abstract about it. Every day we are enacting a narrative of the self (an “identity” that rules in our hearts); we have only to become self-conscious about this, and we will see how it affects everything. But I have run on far too long, and must wait for another time.

“The first act of the Christian life is a renunciation, a challenge. No one can be Christ’s until he has, first, faced evil, and then become ready to fight it. How far is this spirit from the way in which we often proclaim, or to use a more modern term, “sell” Christianity today! Is it not usually presented as a comfort, help, release from tensions, a reasonable investment of time, energy and money? One has only to read – be it but once – the topics of the Sunday sermons announced in the Saturday newspapers, or the various syndicated “religious columns,” to get the impression that “religion” is almost invariably presented as salvation from something – fear, frustration, anxiety – but never as the salvation of man and the world. How could we then speak of “fight” when the very set-up of our churches must, by definition, convey the idea of softness, comfort, peace? How can the Church use again the military language, which was its own in the first days, when it still thought of itself as militia Christi? One does not see very well where and how “fight” would fit into the weekly bulletin of a suburban parish, among all kinds of counseling sessions, bake sales, and “young adult” get-togethers.” (Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World)

“Christianity regards sin not as ignorance, which can easily be overcome by some enlightenment, but as an appalling power, which produces its effects throughout the cosmos; and over against this power it brings reconciliation and redemption in the deepest and broadest sense of those terms. It brings redemption from the guilt and the stain, from all the consequences of sin, from the errors of the intellect and the impurity of the heart, from the death of soul and body. It brings that redemption not only to the individual but also, organically, to the family and generations of families, to people and society, to humanity and the world.” (Bavinck, p. 1.595)

“Christ himself, though free from all error and sin, was never, strictly speaking, active in the field of science and art, commerce and industry, law and politics. His was another kind of greatness: the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. But precisely for that reason he was a source of blessing for science and art, society and state. Jesus is Savior, only that but that totally. He came not only to restore the religious-ethical life of human beings and to leave all other things untouched as if they were not corrupted by sin and did not need to be restored. Indeed not, for as far as sin extends, so far also the grace of Christ extends.” (Bavinck, p. 1.445)

I got quite a chuckle when a friend recently suggested RTE should be renamed “blogvinck.com.” In my own defense, it just so happens that I started this thing the same year I’m reading through the Reformed Dogmatics. 

But speaking of Bavinck, I want to go back today to my earlier entry on Christ as Savior of the world. I suggested there that a full-orbed doctrine of Christ must take account of His relationship not only to sinners (which scripture certainly addresses) but also to the cosmos (because this, too, scripture addresses, and with great profundity). Those who insist on giving individual soteriology “priority” over the cosmological implications of the gospel (or vice versa) must consider whether these are not equally ultimate in the Christology of the Bible. It is simply not the case that Christ is busy saving sinners now but will worry about the cosmos later. The One by whom thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities were created (Col 1:16) has now been raised from the dead and seated far above all rule and authority and power and dominion (Eph 1:20–21), and this has implications far beyond His overcoming the enmity of individual hearts. The cosmos is not the same since Jesus rose from the dead; that’s a broader issue than sinners getting saved. Salvation of the sinner is never abstracted from Christ’s taking His seat and His inheritance now as the Last Adam, even as Christ’s position with respect to the cosmos is intimately connected to what He is doing in the midst of redeemed sinners. The two cannot be separated, precisely because Christ is the fullness of who He is. 

Okay, but then I read something in Bavinck that made me think the root of all this does not lie, strictly speaking, even in Christology. Christology must (no surprise to Trinitarians) be placed in proper relationship to pneumatology; and when we get into the doctrine of the Spirit, it is even more obvious that the cosmological cannot be separated from the soteriological. Here’s Bavinck: 

“When in Scripture and in the church the revelation of God that appeared in Christ has become a constituent of the cosmos, a new dispensation begins. . . . For the special revelation in Christ is not meant to be restricted to himself but, proceeding from him, to be realized in the church, in humanity, in the world. The aim of revelation, after all, is to re-create humanity after the image of God, to establish the kingdom of God on earth, to redeem the world from the power of sin and, in and through all this, to glorify the name of the Lord in all his creatures. In light of this, however, an objective revelation in Christ is not sufficient, but there needs to be added a working of the Spirit in order that human beings may acknowledge and accept that revelation of God and thereby become the image of the Son.” (Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 1.347–48)

Bavinck’s thesis, as I understand it, is that world history is divided into two great dispensations (“two great periods,” as he says elsewhere, p. 1.382). The first dispensation is that of the Son: in this period, God prepares the way for His own coming to “tabernacle” among men in the Person of Christ Jesus. But once Christ has arrived, the “dispensation of the Son then makes way for the dispensation of the Spirit” (p. 1.383). Here Bavinck brings forward a magnificent metaphor: 

“Objective revelation passes into subjective appropriation. In Christ, in the middle of history, God created an organic center; from this center, in an ever widening sphere, God drew the circles within which the light of revelation shines. The sun as it rises covers only a small area of the surface of the earth with its rays, but at its zenith it shines brilliantly over the whole earth.” (p. 1.383) 

We are living in the second great period, the dispensation of the Spirit, in which God is bringing forth not the revelation of the Son (He has already done that) but rather the appropriation of that revelation by the power of the Spirit. This age “belongs” (if we may so express it) to the Spirit, whose task it is to take the things revealed in the Son and bring them to fruition in all the earth. Through the working of the Spirit, the rays of the Sun of Righteousness will fill the world as the waters cover the sea. Does this involve the salvation of individual sinners? Of course it does. But does it also have tremendous cosmological implications? To ask the question is to answer it: are we really prepared to say that the Spirit’s new creation work in history will amount to snatching a few souls from the flames of hell, while the world as a whole remains “without form and void” (Gen 1:2) until it is destroyed and the “real” new creation begins (cosmologically speaking) at the parousia of the Son? Such a view not only dishonors Christ as the Last Adam, it also dishonors His Spirit. 

I appreciate that caution is in order in “predicting” just how the Spirit will fill the earth with the glory and knowledge of the Lord. But surely scripture will not permit us to think of new creation as deferred until after the Second Coming; and we must be very careful not to diminish our hope in the prospects for new creation in the meantime. The reason for this lies not only in our doctrine of Christ but also in our doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Lately I’ve been thinking again about the relationship between soteriology and cosmology: what God does in Christ for sinners and what He does in Christ for the world. All of this is bound up, of course, with definitions of the “gospel”: is the gospel about God’s saving sinners, or is it about His saving the world? I, for one, would like to say “both”; and in some recent reading in Romans, it became freshly clear to me why. The gospel of God, says Paul, is “about” (peri in the Greek) the Son of God (Rom 1:3). If you want to talk about the gospel, you have to talk first about Jesus the Son of God – and from Jesus, scripture moves organically to how He stands related to sinners (“He will save His people from their sins”) and to the cosmos (one thinks here of the magnificent hymn in Colossians 1:15–20). To put it somewhat technically, the nexus between soteriology and cosmology is Christology (which is charged with eschatology, but that’s another story).

When the church thinks of the gospel restrictively, purely in terms of individual souls getting saved, this is because of a deficient Christology. What on earth might it mean, in such a gospel, that Christ is the Last Adam? (I suspect the answer might be that He is Last Adam at the head of redeemed sinners now, and that He will be Last Adam over the world to come, but this has little to do with the present dying world.)

Likewise, however, when the church thinks of the gospel as a cosmic restoration plan in which individual reconciliation to God is relatively unimportant, this too is because of impoverished Christology. Jesus died under God’s righteous wrath against the real sins of real sinners, after all; and without the good news of propitiation, forgiveness, justification, and adoption, there might be a new heavens and new earth one day, but it will be uninhabited.