Lot offering his daughters to the men of Sodom is an affront to our moral sensibilities, yet the New Testament calls him a righteous man. Could our problem be simply that the Bible is smarter than we are?

George Athas (from Moore College, Australia) has a theory that not only harmonises the story with the New Testament estimation of Lot, it also accords with James Jordan’s rejection of other supposed moral failures by the primeval saints as misinterpretations. Athas considers various theories put forth by commentators, and they make some valid points, but each is lacking in some way. He then writes:

This leads us now to reconsider the nature of Lot’s shocking offer in Gen 19:8. If the narrative sets us up to expect Lot to be a righteous man, what are we to make of his apparently scandalous proposal to give his two daughters for pack rape? We can see how this dilemma leads commentators either to attempt to exonerate Lot, or else to reinterpret Lot’s character completely. The way forward lies in identifying detail omission. We have already mentioned this narrative device, but here we need to define it and notice its particular use in Gen 19.

Detail omission occurs when a narrator deliberately hides information from the reader at one point in a narrative, only to reveal the information at a later point. It is a rhetorical device whereby the presentation of information within a narrative is delayed, in order to control the reading process, shape the reader’s expectations (either consciously or subconsciously) and, thereby, affect the reader’s experience of the narrative. Depending on whether the reader is aware of the hidden information, this creates either an element of curiosity or surprise…

Gen 19 contains a masterful use of Unknown Detail Omission creating surprise. The narrator exploits ambiguities in the narrative to fool the reader into ordering the narrative a particular way, and then surprises the reader at a later point by revealing that the reader has ordered the situation wrongly. This begins with Lot’s offer of hospitality to the two messengers in Gen 19:2. Lot says to them:

“Here you are, my lords! Come by your servant’s house, stay, wash your feet, then rise early, and go on your way.”

Bailey rightly picks up the ambiguity in the phrase “wash your feet,” which can be a euphemism for sex. The ambiguity creates curiosity through a known detail omission: the reader knows that Lot is offering hospitality to the two messengers, but does not know what kind of hospitality he is offering. Is Lot offering the messengers an opportunity for sexual gratifica-tion? Or is Lot simply offering them the opportunity literally to wash their feet. We may compare the scene with Gen 18:4, in which Abraham also offers his guests the chance to wash their feet. However, Abraham’s offer is unambiguously literal: he offers to bring some water, thereby ruling out the possibility that he is offering sexual gratification to his guests. But such is not the case with Lot. The known detail omission leads the reader to wonder whether Lot is a righteous man like his uncle, Abraham, or a licentious host.

What’s more, Lot is in Sodom—a city characterized by its wicked inhabitants. And in the previous chapter, Abraham’s bargaining with God has set the reader up to see whether ten righteous people can be found in Sodom (18:32). The reader hopes that Lot is a righteous man and, along with Abraham, that ten righteous people can be found within its gates to spare the city, including Lot and his family. There is, therefore, a lot riding on this encounter (pun intended), but at this stage the reader does not know whether Lot’s hospitality is a good thing or a bad thing. Furthermore, in Gen 18:5, Abraham’s three guests accept his unambiguous offer of righteous hospitality immediately. But such is not the case with the two messengers in Gen 19. On the contrary, they initially turn down Lot’s offer.

This heightens the mystery and tension. Do they perhaps sense that Lot is offering them inappropriate hospitality? Has Lot himself become just like the wicked sinners of Sodom? Lot needs to urge the messengers to stay with him before they finally accept. And as they go to his house, the reader prepares to see just what kind of hospitality Lot does offer. The narrative produces crucial curiosity at this point. The fate of Sodom hangs critically in the balance.

The situation is compounded by a further ambiguity in the temporal clause at the start of Gen 19:4. The clause reads “Before they bedded down”. The reader is led to ask whether this is simply lying down to sleep for the night, or whether it also has a sexual connotation. The action does not actually occur, as is indicated by the adverb “before”. However, the narrator employs the power of suggestion by framing the next incident in the episode with reference to this aborted action. This not only implies that the arrival of the men of Sodom at Lot’s door is an interruption, but that the act of “bedding down” (however it is viewed) was certainly about to occur. Again, the reader hopes the potential action was innocent, but the narrator does not give sufficient clarity for the reader to be sure. The ambiguities here produce considerable curiosity and different potential interpretations of the narrative.

At this point, the men of Sodom surround the house and demand Lot bring the messengers out in order to “know” them. This too is another ambiguity because of the semantic range and possible connotations of the verb “to know”, which include both knowing factually and knowing sexually. Are they simply carrying out a defensive investigation in order to “know” facts, as Bailey suggests, or are they demanding a sexual encounter? The ambiguity instilled in the narrative to this point heightens the stakes here. In either case, the reader is likely to interpret the scene through the lens of the narrator’s  earlier note that the men of Sodom were very wicked (13:13). If the reader believes Lot has offered sexual gratification to his guests, then the reader will conclude that Lot has become like the residents of Sodom: a wicked sinner. As such, the reader will interpret the demand of the Sodomites as asking for their own sexual encounter with the guests.

But even if the reader sees the scene as a defensive operation, the characterization of the Sodomites will lead the reader to expect that they will brutalize the two messengers. Rape of civilians was common enough in ancient societies (cf. Judg 5:30; Lam 5:11; Zech 14:2). As Janzen highlights, ancient warfare sought to break down city walls and gates in order to penetrate and desecrate a city. The symbolic connection between sex and politics was often embodied (in the fullest sense of the word) through the “diabolical sacrament” of the rape of defeated inhabitants.

When we recall that the two messengers had arrived at Sodom’s gate (Gen 19:1) and, through Lot’s hospitality, had entered the city, we may begin to see how the inhabitants of Sodom might have thought their city had been covertly infiltrated by potential conquerors. Their demand to “know” the two messengers could, therefore, be understood as seeking to respond in kind—giving conquerors a taste of their own bitter medicine. And since the reader knows that the men of Sodom were very wicked (13:13), the reader expects them to be capable of such atrocities towards perceived militants…

In Gen 19:6–8, Lot makes his shocking offer. He has two daughters “who have never known a man” to offer to the mob to assuage their penchant for sex and violence. This offer is a pivotal moment in the narrative, for up until this point all of Lot’s words and actions have been ambiguous. Now the reader perceives Lot’s true colors, as he unambiguously shows that he is every bit as abusive as the men of Sodom, dashing any hope that he might have been a righteous man. While the Sodomites had wanted to “know” and brutalize the two messengers, Lot now offers the “knowledge” and brutalization of his daughters. The range of Pentateuchal norms mentioned view the brutalizing of women as heinous and potentially deserving of the death penalty. This causes the reader to evaluate Lot’s previously ambiguous offer of hospitality as inappropriate: he did indeed offer sexual gratification to the two messengers, and this must be why they had initially refused. Their final acquiescence to stay in his house, therefore, is not evidence of the messengers’ depravity, but evidence of Lot’s persistent wickedness. It turns the messengers’ reconnaissance into a mission to prove Lot’s depravity. To underline this, the narrator uses the same verb to describe the pressure Lot exerts on the messengers to accept his hospitality as the pressure the men of Sodom now put on Lot to bring the messengers out to them. Since migrating to the Jordan Basin in Gen 13:12, it seems the bad company of Sodom has corrupted Lot’s character. There is not a single righteous person in the city. Sodom’s (and Lot’s) fate is sealed!…

The narrative uses the reader’s revulsion at rape to turn hopes and sympathies against Lot. His own appeal to the rules of hospitality is thereby not designed to make the reader sympathetic towards him, but rather to show that Lot has “lost the plot.” He is using what is essentially a good code as justification for a crime against his own daughters.

Nonetheless, the narrative does take a surprising turn. The messengers pull Lot back inside the house and stun the mob outside, thus preventing them from finding their way to the door to cause harm (Gen 19:10–11). But then, rather than condemn Lot for his depravity, the messengers ask (19:12–13):

“Do you have anyone else here: a son-in-law, or your sons or daughters—anyone else in the town who belongs to you? Get them out of this place, because we are about to destroy this place. Since the outcry against them is so great before Yahweh, he has sent us to destroy it.”

Why would the messengers seek to save Lot when he has just unambiguously demonstrated that morally he is every bit as corrupt as the men of Sodom? Has not Lot sealed his own fate along with the rest of the city? Evidently not! But why not? Gen 19:14 is the moment the narrator reveals a key detail that has been withheld from the reader up until this point. The verse states:

So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law who were married to his daughters. He said, “Get up! Get out of this place, because Yahweh is about to destroy the town.” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.

Surprisingly, Lot’s daughters are not virgins! On the contrary, they are already married. Until this moment, the narrator has exploited the story’s ambiguities to make the reader think Lot’s daughters are virgins and just inside the door of his house. The reader has even come to believe that Lot might have offered his two daughters to the two messengers for sex, before the mob of Sodom interrupted, leading Lot to offer them to the mob instead. But this is clearly not the case. Lot apparently has sons-in-law, and just to underscore this fact, the narrator employs a tautology: “his sons-in-law who were married to his daughters”. Lot also has to go out to them, because they are not in the house with him. This can only mean that Lot’s daughters are also not in the house with him. This, then, explains why the messengers have to ask Lot whether he has any sons-in-law, sons, or daughters in the city (19:12), for they simply cannot tell from the confines of Lot’s house. And eventually, when Lot returns to the house, the messengers tell him to take his wife and his two daughters “who have been found” (19:15) out of the city before it is destroyed. The word ‘who have been found’ is used only of Lot’s two daughters, and does not include Lot’s wife.

Furthermore, its use makes no sense if Lot’s daughters were already in the house, as presumably Lot’s wife was. However, it makes good sense if Lot has indeed gone out, found them, and brought them back to his house, albeit without their husbands, who do not believe destruction is imminent. This also precludes the possibility that Lot had more than two daughters—that is, two unmarried daughters in the house whom he tries to substitute for the divine messengers, and other married daughters living elsewhere in the city whose husbands do not believe Lot’s warning. At the end of the episode, there are indeed only two daughters with Lot (19:30), and these are the two daughters who had been found in 19:15.

All this means that by withholding the key detail that Lot’s daughters are already married and living elsewhere in the city, the narrator has fooled the reader into believing that Lot’s daughters have been in the house all along, and that Lot is a degenerate father. So masterfully does the narrator fool the reader, that most subsequent translators are thoroughly fooled too. Instead of rightly translating the phrase as “his sons-in-law who had married his daughters,” translators usually depict them as “sons-in-law who were to marry his daughters” (NRSV, ESV; cf. RSV, NIV, HSCB, NET). They cannot conceive of Lot’s daughters as anything but virgins immediately inside Lot’s house. Even Robert Alter, who rightly recognizes that the narrative is here revealing previously concealed information in a surprising way, still sees the daughters as betrothed, rather than already married…

Once this key detail about Lot’s daughters is revealed, the narrative suddenly turns on its head. The reader is forced to reassess the entire episode in light of this new information. Lot did not have two virgin daughters to offer to the mob outside his door. So why would he say that he did? Two factors help explain it. The first is the hospitality code of the ancient Near East. Gen 18 depicts Abraham as a paragon of hospitality, and the juxtaposition of that chapter before the Sodom episode affords easy comparison between Abraham and Lot. Furthermore, we have already mentioned the Ugaritic Epic of Aqhat, which describes the model son as one “who drives out those who would abuse his houseguest” (Aqhat I:30). Protection of guests was indeed a virtue. Lot feels compelled, therefore, to protect the two messengers to whom he has offered the shelter of his roof.

The second factor is that Lot perceives the wicked intent of the Sodomite mob to brutalize the two messengers. His offer of two virgin daughters is a ruse designed to appeal to the sexual appetite of the mob. It seems Lot hopes they might accept the offer, and while they wait for him to go and bring out his daughters, he might be able to smuggle his guests safely out of town. In other words, Lot’s shocking offer is a decoy to buy time. Even our translators fall for this decoy completely, which shows how skillfully the narrative depicts Lot as a quick thinker. Lot actually has no intention of bringing out two virgin daughters for pack rape, because he does not have two virgin daughters. Rather he is intent on ensuring the safety of his guests. The problem, however, is that Lot’s house is surrounded. As well intentioned as we now discover him to be, his ruse probably doesn’t stand a chance of working. This then explains the need for divine intervention, as the two messengers stun the mob and achieve for Lot what he had hoped his decoy might have done: buy time.

This also enables Lot’s free movement. But despite it, Lot eventually hesitates to leave the city (Gen 19:16). This hesitation is critical in light of Abraham’s negotiation over Sodom in the previous chapter. Despite Abraham’s best bargaining efforts (18:32), not even ten righteous men can be found in Sodom to avert the city’s destruction. Not even Lot’s sons-in-law qualify, though even their inclusion would not be enough to avert destruction as per Abraham’s terms to which Yahweh has agreed. Lot, the only righteous man in Sodom, must therefore flee the city before its cataclysmic downfall, but he hesitates. His righteousness is probably what sparks Yahweh’s compassion for him (19:16). And so, the two messengers physically escort Lot, his wife, and his two daughters “who have been found” out of the town. Lot, despite his quick thinking, was unable to safeguard his guests and smuggle them out of town. Yet, because of his own righteousness, he is not destroyed with the city, but is ironically safeguarded and smuggled out of town by those very same guests. Once again, the narrative takes an ironic turn.¹George Athas, “Has Lot Lost the Plot? Detail Omission and a Reconsideration of Genesis 19” in Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Volume 16, Article 5 DOI:10.5508/jhs.2016.v16.a5. Full article available here.

After considering the further twist of the sin of Lot’s daughters “knowing” their father, who does not “know” that he has “known” his own daughters, Athas concludes that “Lot has not ‘lost the plot.’ The reader has!”

This possible solution accords with James Jordan’s view concerning Abram’s lie about Sarai being his sister, since Abram was vindicated by God’s judgment. Jordan also defends Jacob and Rebekah in their “righteous deception” of blind Isaac and the degenerate Esau.²James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints, Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis. The midwives in Egypt who lied to Pharaoh were also blessed by God. The point is that deception of evil doers is a righteous act, and one which turns the craftiness of the serpent back on himself. The cross, of course, was the ultimate deception, an Adam willing to die for His bride because of His faith in the promises of God.

All of this supports the idea that the Scriptures are often obfuscatory to sort the faithful from the unfaithful. The righteous will meditate on the apparent wickedness of Lot while the wicked will simply condemn the Bible as an unrighteous book, and thus condemn themselves.

With the merciful you show yourself merciful;
with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
with the purified you show yourself pure;
and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.
Psalm 18:26

With the inheritance of Canaan and the dividing up of this priestly territory among the tribes, Israel became a microcosm of the nations of the world.

This division between Israel and the nations as a substitutionary “land and sea” would prevent another global rebellion, and thus another global judgment.¹For more discussion, see Michael Bull, Cosmic Language. The existence of a “peculiar” people who could never assimilate prevented a repeat of the compromise of the sons of Seth (Genesis 6:2) and of the sons of Joktan, the first Hebrews (Genesis 10:25 – 11:2). Serving as a restraint from sin, circumcision was thus a divine mercy which, to some degree, blessed all nations right from its inception. This office is prefigured in Abram’s kingly prevention of a conspiracy of nations in Genesis 14, followed by his priestly refusal to lay his hand on the spoils. He was in covenant with God and could have no open obligations, through treaty or intermarriage, to the kings of the land. Not only would his inheritance come from the hand of God, his ministry of evangelism among its current inhabitants could not be tainted.²For more discussion, see James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis, 65-66.

Continue reading at Theopolis Institute.

Reformed theology is the best school in which to learn about covenant theology, yet it is also the worst place to learn about New Covenant theology. Why is this so?

Reading a to-and-fro between a baptist and a paedobaptist recently, it struck me that despite the fine manners and scholarly diligence on display in the responses of both gentlemen, neither of them really had a grip on what they were dealing with.

The prime example was the way in which each relied on the Abrahamic Covenant to support his case. The paedobaptist accused the baptist of spiritualising this covenant, while the baptist accused the paedobaptist of “carnalizing” it. Both of them were cherrypicking in order to support their take on God’s covenants in general.

Now, theologians love to generalise in order to avoid doing the grubby work of dealing with specifics, and one ubiquitous theological meme, dripping with clever evasiveness, is the statement that there is both continuity and discontinuity between each covenant, or each stage of the overall covenant of God with men. Apparently there is some entirely arbitrary “spectrum” of relevance in each covenant, and we are supposed to isolate the elements which are common to all covenants to discover what a covenant is. Then we can figure out whether “covenant membership” is based on faith, or heredity, or tribe, or all of the above.

“…both sides get an F when
it comes to covenant theology.”

On the “baptistic” side, things tend to slide into a realm where the physical rites, baptism and communion and even corporate worship, are considered to be less important than “my personal relationship with Jesus.” The New Covenant sign is “faith,” but since true faith expresses itself in willingness to submit to discipleship under Christ’s representatives, in examination of heart, in a desire to be with other saints, in prayer and good works and in legal testimony before the Church and the world, this error is easy to deal with.

On the “paedobaptistic” side, the focus on the rites, the “covenant signs,” leads to:

a) an illogical splitting of the sacraments in the withholding of communion until a baptised child comes of age;

b) united paedosacraments which merely serve as a legalistic “claim” upon the baptizand until they are truly born again; or

c) united paedosacraments which somehow regenerate the receiver without any requirement of actual repentance.

As I have written elsewhere, each of these three conclusions is an attempt to deal with the doctrinal fallout of the errant rite of paedobaptism in a slightly different way. The conflation of circumcision and baptism necessitates the redefinition, or scapegoating of something, somewhere. In order to preserve the tradition, the scapegoat chosen for sacrifice is either the necessity of personal conversion (and the redefinition of “faith”), or the global nature of the New Covenant, or the efficacy of the sacraments.

However, both sides, baptistic and paedobaptistic, get an F when it comes to covenant theology. The baptists are right when it comes to the necessity of hearing the Gospel and responding in faith as the defining characteristic of a Christian, but generally they have little idea of what a covenant with God actually is. “Covenant” is just a word to describe God’s “agreement” with Noah, Abraham and Moses. There is little understanding of a covenant as a process, with delegated authority, rules for success, desired results and accountability, and a use-by date. It is these “missional” elements which are the things common to every biblical covenant, yet somehow these are totally overlooked in the continuity/discontinuity debate.

“…the solution is an aspect
which both sides in this debate,
as far as I know, have either failed
to discern or failed to apply.”

The paedobaptists, generally speaking, at least understand what a biblical covenant is. The problem is that since they are stuck with their baptismal tradition, they pick the Abrahamic Covenant as their benchmark for covenants. This renders them enemies of many fundamental differences between the various covenants, which are simply the result of the fact that each covenant has a different mission. They are so keen on the maintenance of the notion of a “Covenant people” delineated by a sign that they force the covenants both before and after the Abrahamic Covenant into the Abrahamic mold. The rainbow is turned into a “sign” upon Noah and his family, when in fact it was a sign upon all creation, one which endures to this day. New Covenant baptism is turned into a “corporate” sign upon all members of a believing household, either conferring “covenant membership” (legalistic accountability) or “infusing” some level of faith without the hearing of the Gospel.

Paedobaptism is a mongrel of a doctrine, an ugly mix of conflicting designs and crossed purposes, which is why its meaning is impossible to define or agree upon even among those who practice it. But it gets worse. For some paedobaptists, the fact that there was no sign of “Covenant membership” upon females under the Abrahamic Covenant, as they believe there is under the New Covenant, means that they go looking for one. Some have suggested that the Levitical “purity rites” for Israelite women served as a sign of membership in some fashion. But although this is a rare assertion, it does demonstrate just how far off the track people will go when following an errant doctrine to its logical conclusion. Since every person within their imagined New Covenant boundary must be “stamped” by Jesus with their “hybridised” New Covenant baptism, this leads them to seek something similar under the Abrahamic Covenant when clearly there was no such thing. For a start, the Levitical rites can have no bearing on membership of the Abrahamic Covenant because they were not instituted until Moses, four centuries later. Females were under the Abrahamic Covenant without any personal sign. Even more inconveniently, there was no personal sign upon anyone whatsoever under the Noahic and Adamic Covenants. They have allowed the stipulations and purpose of the Abrahamic Covenant to distort their comprehension of the New Covenant, and then their perverted understanding of the New Covenant requires the distortion the Abrahamic Covenant. This is not “Covenant continuity” but enforced “equalisation,” the theological equivalent of gender neutrality. It is a wilful twisting of the Scripture to defend the indefensible, bordering on the brand of hermeneutical travesty committed by the Roman Catholic Church in defence of its own coercive and highly imaginative traditions. Yet regardless of how much they must sacrifice, doctrinally-speaking, and how many ludicrous notions they must consider to maintain this shibboleth, they consistently refuse to question their devotion to this age-old household god. I find this incomprehensible.

However, for two thousand years in God’s economy (not today), one was either a Jew or a Gentile, either in Abraham or not, so there clearly was some kind of “membership.” Is there a way that we can understand the history of the greater Covenant, taking into account each of its varied stages, including the ways in which each stage uniquely complements and contrasts with the others, that enables us to discern both what is continuous or discontinuous and why? Most certainly there is, and the solution is an aspect which both sides in this debate, as far as I know, have either failed to discern or failed to apply.

“In some sense, only a twist on
the Copernican revolution in
covenant theology can unite
the schizoid sacramentology
of the modern Church.”

When Covenant history is diagrammed by the experts on both sides, it is inevitably linear. This is understandable, since history itself is linear. But a journey from the boundary of our solar system to the heart of our sun is also linear, although the solar system itself is not. My assertion here is that the various covenants throughout history are not segments but spheres, not lines but layers. Passing from the orbit of Mars to the orbit of the Earth does not render the orbit of Mars redundant or non-existent.

Likewise, we must understand that the establishing of the Abrahamic Covenant did not nullify the Noahic. The Covenant with Noah was in full force in its original form at least until the end of the Abrahamic Covenant in AD70, for the Gentiles were still obliged to keep its basic stipulations. This fact was the basis for the judgment of James at the Jerusalem Council of the Church in Acts 15. There was no need to put believing Gentiles under the Law of Moses. Nor was there any need to circumcise them as members of the Abrahamic extended family, the dispersed tribal nation of Israel. Yet, (and what follows here we must understand if the disgusting fissures in our sacramental unity are to be closed and healed) these Gentiles were still “under Covenant,” just not the Abrahamic one. This is because the Abrahamic Covenant did not exist after the Noahic Covenant, nor even alongside it, but within it, just as the orbit of the Earth exists within the orbit of Mars. In some sense, only a twist on the Copernican revolution in covenant theology can unite the schizoid sacramentology of the modern Church.

Since Covenant history resembles the medieval concept of the celestial spheres,¹See also String Theory the “outer limits” consist of the reach of the covenant intended to be ratified in Adam. The word “covenant” is never used of Adam, and this is because he failed to qualify for kingdom. The word is not used until God spoke to Noah, the first man to qualify as a righteous judge, a man who could legally represent God on earth because he was found faithful in the eyes of heaven. However, the curse of death remained. This was because the Noahic Covenant was ratified within the Adamic one. All men were still in Adam.

“…the Mosaic Covenant
was ratified not in opposition to 
but within the Abrahamic one.”

When Noah’s offspring sinned in ways that can be corresponded to the offspring of Adam, another global deluge was on the horizon, covenantally-speaking: the destruction of all flesh. To keep the promises to Noah, God divided humanity in two in Abraham. However, the Noahic order of priest-kings, such as Melchizedek and Jethro and Job, still ministered among the Gentile nations as “sons of God,” which may explain the persistence of accounts similar to the early chapters of Genesis not only in the Ancient Near East but also in just about every culture around the world. Every human being was still a “member” of Adam, and a “member” of Noah, yet only those in Abraham’s household were members of this new genealogical-tribal covenant. Noah was not replaced. Like Adam, he was “divided” that he might later be conquered and glorified.

The main players in the Abrahamic line reversed, in many ways, the failures of Noah’s sons, but in Moses they were brought to maturity, both in size (as a nation) and accountability (in ministry). Israel was baptised into Moses and another covenant was established, and here we see centuries of wasted ink revealed for what they are as we understand that the Mosaic Covenant was ratified not in opposition to but within the Abrahamic one. Every Israelite was still in Adam, and still in Noah, and of course in Abraham, but not every Israelite was a member of the tribe of Levi. The Levitical order served within Israel as yet another layer, smaller and with even more concentrated standards of purity. Within the tribe of Levi, only males of a certain physical and moral standard were permitted to serve as priests, and even then under a roster of temporary vows, a division between the common and the uncommon in holy office. Then, of course, there was the High Priest, the focal point of this particular layer, but even here, since the Aaronic order was genealogical, God made a covenant within it, giving Phinehas the succession since he was found faithful.

This layered “geocentric” process can also be observed in the developments or refinements in the sacrificial praxes. Adam was to offer himself, but judgment for his failure was stemmed by God‘s mercy in the first substitutionary sacrifices. They were slain and offered whole but not burnt. The first burnt offering — or “ascension” — was presented by Noah, picturing his office as a mediator with authority from the heavenly court. Humans were now permitted to eat flesh, but not blood. In Abraham, picturing the division between Jew and Gentile, certain animals were chosen by God and cut in half by Abraham. Under the Levitical Law, animals were not only presented and cut to be offered by fire, but the various parts were allocated to different purposes, places and people. In a sense, the move towards the High Priesthood of Aaron was a cutting away at the flesh of Adam (or his substitutes) to get to the heart of the matter.

But of course, history did not stop there. The temple and priesthood were glorified under the inspired administration of King David, and here we observe yet another “eternal” covenant. Of course, you should by now understand that the Davidic Covenant existed within Adam, Noah, Abraham, and the Law of Moses (as expressed in the Psalms), being “under”, that is, accountable, to all of them, as they related to, operated within, mediated for and expounded upon each other. The holy center of this new, smaller, even purer, orbit, was not the hearing of the laws under priesthood but the incarnation of the law in true kingdom.

Following the failure of Israel’s kings, there was another division, and another covenant, this time with Jeroboam. His “orbit” was actually outside, larger than, the covenants with Levi and David, and his envy of their centrality was at the heart of his rebellion and idolatry. This envy was also at the heart of the rebellion of Korah, who apparently believed that every tribal leader in Israel should be a priest-king after the order of Melchizedek/Noah.

After the exile, a “new covenant” was established under Ezra and Nehemiah, Zechariah and Haggai, as predicted by Jeremiah.²See Jeremiah”s New Covenant. The priesthood would serve as keepers for the Davidic line, and now every Israelite, not just the priests, was required to prove his genealogical heritage. The latter prophets rail against the sins which led to the downfall of the previous kingdom, and this newly restored Israel, like the second generation in the wilderness, avoided the idolatries and adulteries of their forefathers. But the point here is that even this “new” covenant was ratified within all the previous ones.

Now we reach the center of this grand celestial construct, and it is of course the New Covenant in the blood of Christ, a covenant which was ratified within all the other covenants and yet fulfilled and succeeded them. In His baptism He was Noah, with the witness of the dove (Creation – Day 1). In His death, He was the circumcision of Abraham, cut off for the world (Division – Day 2). In His Ascension (Day 3), as the Lamb worthy to open the scroll, He was Moses on the mountain, receiving the Law of the Spirit. At Pentecost, He brought the kingdom of God, the law in the hearts of men (Testing – Day 4). In the testimony of the apostles, He was Israel scattered among the Gentiles, establishing New Covenant synagogues (Maturity – Day 5). In the destruction of Jerusalem, He was a new Israel freed from idolatry and adultery under “Babylon” (Conquest – Day 6). And with the covenantal knife finally reaching the heart of the matter, the construction of the Bride was complete, and it is in this light that we must understand the marriage feast of the Lamb in Revelation 19 as already fulfilled in history (Glorification – Day 7). All the old demarcations were eradicated, or more correctly, transformed.

Since our High Priest has entered into and recast the fiery center of the system, the entire Old Testament history is now a magnificent, seven-ringed “armillary sphere,” wheels within wheels, an apparatus of heavenly measurement which incorporates and employs in perfect harmony the specific authority of each of Jesus’ major Covenantal predecessors. It is now we who must follow Him from that center, from personal conversion into our families, tribes and nations to the outer limits, where the final enemy, death, will be destroyed, and the universe will be renewed. But all of these elements are already “in Christ” and thus already in our hands. In Emmanuel, God is with us, not only in our hearts, but to go up and possess our inheritance.

“All men, women and children
were always under covenant
with God in some form…”

The conclusion concerning “Covenant membership” and the concept of “Covenant children” in the binary sense as understood by many paedobaptists is that these were uniquely Abrahamic features and obligations, earthly stoicheia, carnal elements serving as stand ins for the heavenly parts of a much greater picture. Now it makes sense why God kept “moving the goal posts,” each level of promise and inheritance becoming redundant with the call to sacrifice it for something greater. Even Abraham understood that Canaan and his offspring were only object lessons for the possession of a heavenly country as tried, qualified and glorified sons of God, enthroned with Christ for rest and rule.

All men, women and children were always under covenant with God in some form, and the notion that baptism, especially paedobaptism, puts people “into the covenant” is absurd. Baptism is the foundation not for life, but for a life of service, of ministry, of accountability and discernment as a “son of God,” just as it was for the world under Noah, and for Israel under Moses.

All people, including all children, even the yet unborn (who cannot be paedobaptized if miscarried), have everything they could possibly have in the Gospel of Christ. The death of Jesus put them into this covenant, under obligation to the great High Priest and King of Kings, and also under His mercy. To limit His jurisdiction to some renovated or hybridised version of the Abrahamic demarcation is to grossly misunderstand Covenant history, defining the glorious New Covenant by one facet of its construction. Our “Covenant community” is not in here. It is out there.

This is why Reformed theology is the best school in which to learn about covenant theology, yet it is also the worst place to learn about New Covenant theology.

“Behold, The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”

“Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38)

James Jordan has observed that Abraham’s “calling on the name of the Lord” was in fact evangelical proclamation of his faith. Abraham’s witness to the Canaanites was something for which they would be held accountable when Israel returned to claim the land. Chris Wooldridge sees this “vocal allegiance” as the key to understanding the meaning of the washing away of sins in the New Testament. Seen in the context of the last days of the Old Covenant, this was not baptismal regeneration but a public identification by the Jewish worshiper with the final sacrificial lamb (Leviticus 1:1-9).

Chris writes:

What does the book of Acts mean when it speaks of Baptism as the means by which sins are “forgiven” (Acts 2:38) or “washed away” (Acts 22:16). What does this mean and how do we reconcile it with the fact that we are justified by faith alone? When confronted with passages like this, there is often a tendency amongst evangelicals to overlook or avoid the obvious connections being drawn. But this is not the answer. In order to understand a passage like this, we need to consider its Covenant context.

Acts 2 records a sermon given by the Apostle Peter to a Jewish audience who were gathered together for the feast of Pentecost. The sermon begins by warning of a coming judgement. Peter, quoting from the book of Joel, proclaims:

And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. (Acts 2:19-20).

The first century Jewish audience, steeped in the Old Testament, would easily have understood the language of cosmic upheaval to be referring to a national judgment (e.g. Isaiah 13:10, Ezekiel 32:7), with the sun and moon representing the rulers of nations.

But this was not to be a judgment of any old nation. No, this judgement was a curse meted out against Israel for her rebellion against God. Peter made it clear that Jesus was a righteous prophet like no other, “a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know” (2:22). And how did Israel respond? By handing Jesus over to be crucified (Acts 2:23, 36). And now, this very same Jesus had been raised from the dead and set up as God’s judge and right-hand man.

No wonder the men were “cut to the heart” (2:27). They knew what happened when Israel disobeyed God and killed His righteous prophets. As Deuteronomy 28 made clear, when the people disobeyed God, the covenant curses were to be poured out upon them: famine, foreign invasion, exile and death.

It is in this context that we discover the reference to the “forgiveness of sins.” The “sins” in question are specifically transgressions against the Law of Moses and the “forgiveness” in question entailed a release from the consequences of those transgressions. For the Jew, Baptism was a public identification with Christ which washed away sin in a way no Levitical washing or atonement could. It declared openly a submission to a higher priest than the one in the Temple and an allegiance to a higher king than the one in Jerusalem. This is why it was performed “in the name of Jesus Christ.”¹Other New Testament passages, such as Romans 6:3-4 and Galatians 3:27, also speak of Baptism as a public identification with Christ.

For any Jew, quietly apologising for what they had done was never sufficient. A public rite was required. Now that rite was an act which made one an ally with the exalted Christ in order to be saved from the final curses of the Law. In forty years’ time, those Jews who wanted to affirm Christ without publicly identifying with him (and therefore against his enemies) were trapped in the city of Jerusalem when the armies of Titus Vespasian besieged the city.

Acts 22:16 is written in a similar context. Paul had unjustly murdered and imprisoned many Christians (Acts 9:1-2), but upon being confronted by the risen Christ he immediately realised his wrongdoing. For him to quietly return to being a Pharisee was impossible. He needed to publicly identify with Christ and with the Church which he had persecuted, in order to be saved from the wrath to come. This was the meaning of his Baptism.

So what does Baptism mean for us today, since we have no “Mosaic” curses hanging over us? 1 Peter 3 tells us that Baptism means than when others revile and slander us for our faith (3:9, 3:14), we can stand firm and identify with Christ (3:15-16). We know that God will judge the wicked and vindicate his people in history, if we are patient. Baptism assures us that, though the nations rage against Christ, he will have the final word. Baptism is not like Old Covenant rites which simply “put away the uncleanness of the flesh.” It is the legal “testimony of a good conscience before God” (3:21), an act which shows that we are not ashamed of Him, that He might not be ashamed of us.

Christian, remember what you declared at your Baptism.

What the Order of Melchizedek Means For Baptism

Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and all His works are chiastic. Because of this, a solid understanding of any Covenant requires us to identify its “bookends.” According to Hebrews, the Melchizedekian bookends are crucial for a comprehension of the limitations of the Abrahamic Covenant.

Firstly, the description of Melchizedek itself has a Covenantal shape, which should help us to understand its content and its flow:

As usual, the internal logic of the content and order of the statements is made plain with a Covenant-literary analysis. In describing this mysterious priest-king of Jerusalem, the author not only recapitulates the first seven books of the Bible, he recapitulates the entire history of the Abrahamic Covenant.

• “Most High God” is a Gentile name for Yahweh, alluding to the priesthood of all nations which existed before the Aaronic priesthood.
• The slaughter of kings and the blessing of “dining with God” as a prophet was fulfilled in the destruction of Egypt and the ascension of Israel’s elders in Exodus 24. In both cases, the tyranny of opportunistic and vengeful “Cains” was judged that the ministry of atonement might be re-established.
• PRIESTHOOD: Abraham’s tithe obviously alludes to the establishment of the Levitical Order, whose members represented the Firstfruits of the Land.
• KINGDOM: As the righteous king of Jerusalem, Melchizedek prefigured the priestly kingdom of David, with its expanded priesthood and permanent house. The reference to the translation of his name at this point might be the fact that God’s chosen man often receives a new name “in the fire” of the Covenant Ethics (beginning with Adam as “Ish.”) For David, it was the establishment of a house for God’s own name.
• PROPHECY: Maturity concerns either war or peace, plagues or plunder, depending on the obedience of the kings. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus blesses the peacemakers at this point. In Israel’s history, of course, the failure of Solomon (“Shelomoh”, derived from shalom) to keep the Mosaic laws for Israel’s kings¹See Guns, Girls and Gold, led to an Imperial Era under Gentile kings.
• Just as circumcision singled out a childless “Father” to be the genealogical source of the Messiah, so baptism began the ministry of a fatherless Son.

The pattern begins with the original Melchizedek and ends with his fulfilment in Christ. It seems to me that the confusion concerning the use of Melchizedek in Hebrews originates from a two-fold failure:

a) A failure to understand the Noahic priesthood as an order of priest-kings like Noah. The union of priesthood and kingdom, Church and State, is pictured in the offering of both bread and wine. Once united, they result in the ministry of the Prophet, the one who not only listens to God, and acts for God, but also speaks for God. The division of humanity into Jew and Gentile was the reason the Aaronic priests never drank wine in God’s presence.²See “The Forbidden Feast” in God’s Kitchen: Theology You Can Eat & Drink. The Lord’s Supper pictured the imminent end of the Aaronic order.

b) They fail to realise that the lack of detail in many descriptions of Old Testament characters is part of the Spirit’s work in giving us archetypes³See the introduction to James Jordan’s Judges commentary. which would later be fulfilled. The name of Manoah’s wife is never revealed to us, not because she was not worthy to be named, but in fact because she was worthy to typify “the Woman” who would give birth to the miraculous Son.

From Adam, we can trace the Messianic genealogy to Abraham. But the purpose of the writer of Hebrews is to demonstrate to his Jewish Christian audience that genealogy was irrelevant to priesthood in the undivided world. Being without genealogy is symbolic of a New Creation, referring to Adam as the “son of God” (Luke 3:38). When the entire Physical world was wiped out, Noah became a man “without genealogy.” The entire previous civilisation had failed, and he was a new beginning. The author of Hebrews does not mention either Adam or Noah because the contrast he desires is only obvious in Abraham’s submission to an uncircumcised priest-king.

This brings us once again⁴See Children of Heaven. to the baptism of Jesus. No one disputes that the appearance of the dove was to symbolise a new Creation, alluding to the “fluttering” or “brooding” of the Spirit upon the waters in Genesis 1, and the dove sent out upon the flood waters by Noah. What I want to highlight here is the subtle supersession of genealogy at this event. Not only is Jesus’ true father revealed as the Father in heaven, He is chosen from a wide field of circumcised, repentant sons of Abraham. At this point, circumcision became entirely redundant. Natural pedigree, or lack of it, is made redundant when one responds to the Gospel and receives the Spirit of Christ. This is why, in Christ, all physical and social advantages or disadvantages become utterly meaningless. The standard is an Ethical/Spiritual transformation, an entirely new life.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

This means that a baptism which is not only given to infants because they are part of a particular social group or family, but purports to confer either “advantages” of grace, or even “salvation” due to natural pedigree is a monstrosity. Paedobaptism mutates baptism into the very thing it supersedes: a new circumcision, a sign which has to do with genealogy, with tribe. It takes the New Covenant and makes it Abrahamic, Aaronic. Consequently, the next verse in Galatians is misunderstood:

And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:29)

Paul says that those in Christ are Abraham’s heirs, but in the context of the preceding verse he cannot be referring to physical offspring. Why would the Lord dismantle the Jew-Gentile divide only to establish something that is almost exactly the same? The answer is found in Jesus’ baptism. He is speaking of the sons of heaven, not the sons of earth, the Order of Melchizedek, not the “genealogical” line of Abraham.

They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did…” (John 8:39)

Paedobaptists claim that their baptism is about faith rather than genealogy, but in truth it is an unworkable hybrid of the two. This is why they fight amongst themselves so much. If their baptism is genealogical, then infants should not receive Communion, because the Table is clearly about faith. If their baptism is about faith, then their infants must somehow be miraculously “regenerate” from the womb. The myopia (or stubbornness) on both sides is breathtaking, because the solution is so simple. Those who claim that “Covenant membership” is objective show a surprising lack of objectivity when it comes to the Scriptures concerning baptism. ⁵I do believe “New Covenant membership” is objective, but this is because everyone on the planet is a member of this Covenant, and called to repent and believe. The clear teaching of the Bible concerning the qualifications for baptism are ignored, and many baptism texts are twisted to fit their agenda.

Marcionism — ignoring the Old Testament — is a wrong turn, because we can only understand the New Testament through studying the Old. But this “objective” baptism requires a kind of reverse Marcionism, where the New Covenant realities are “carnalised” and rendered “Abrahamic.” Almost all of the supposed “proof texts” for paedobaptism are Abrahamic, including the ones in the New Testament. But the Order of Melchizedek is a priesthood whose ordination celebrates the irrelevance of genealogy.⁶See An Atheist ‘Gets’ Baptism. Just ask a Jew or a Roman Catholic whose grown child has committed the “unforgivable sin” of getting baptised by immersion. Many such converts are disowned, because their circumcision or baptism is hereditary. The unwillingness of many Christians to submit to biblical baptism is likely due to a similar fear. If one sprinkled Presbyterian requested to be immersed in a congregation of sprinklers, this act immediately renders all their “baptisms” to be meaningless, totally discredited. Suddenly, they are revealed to be what they are: baby dedications. This is because such a baptism is an act which publicly states an allegiance to heaven rather than earth, to God rather than men. If you question a credobaptism, you question Christ. If you question a paedobaptism, you merely question some earthly guardians (regardless of the claims of efficacy by many paedobaptists).

Baptism is about ethical maturity, about “outgrowing” your parents. This is why circumcision and baptism sit where they do (typologically) in the passage above. Circumcision is an objective application of the Law. Baptism, however, speaks of internal Law. It is about stepping off the coat tails of your parents and answering to God and His Church for yourself. It is about the beginning of ministry, graduating from being limited to “priestly” bread to drinking wine in God’s presence as a king, that one might go and serve as a prophet.⁷Wine is not for children. Paedocommunion puts the mental in sacramentalism! Sadly, many of my paedobaptist friends think the cries of their infants are somehow terrifying to the devil and to the nations, as though the birth of a child is as miraculous as Christ emerging from the grave. This is ludicrous. Perhaps if they applied their teaching on the interpretation of tongues to these infant cries they might stop being so silly. Babies are not prophets. Giving the wine of the Sanctuary to infants is to claim that circumcision of heart is not necessary to be a son (representative) of God, and this particular claim originated in the mouth of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

As a New Covenant “child of God,” the Christian is “without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.” The second birth makes the first birth quite meaningless. To celebrate a first birth with baptism is like having wedding cake at a circumcision (as Peter Leithart evidently does). A paedobaptism which requires not only parents but “God-parents” is the exact opposite of Jesus’ baptism. It is a blatantly obvious distortion of everything which Jesus’ baptism stood for. Paedobaptist friends have told me that paedobaptism is not purely genealogical, and neither was circumcision, to which I reply that it was genealogical/tribal, the exact opposite of the New Covenant, which is designed not to replace but to transcend all  such human boundaries. If parental/tribal guardians must be present, then I’m afraid the heavenly Father has nothing to do with it. If it has four legs, a tail, and barks like a dog, it is not a wild stallion.

I am surprised the Reformers did not reject the practice. I guess they were culture-bound by their idea of Christendom, resulting in a “civic” sprinkling as part of a rite of citizenship, but modern paedobaptists are not bound by such ideas (and ought not to hanker after them!). In any case, we are to obey God rather than men, the Bible rather than the Reformers. And a good dose of objective, logical thinking would not go astray, either.

To insist on paedobaptism, or to be wrong more consistently by insisting on paedosacraments (Abraham ate the bread and drank the wine on behalf of those in his loins), is to misunderstand both why circumcision was instituted (a fundamentally Social order) and why it was ended (replaced by a fundamentally Ethical order). In baptism, an individual becomes a new Creation, and I will discuss what this means in the next post.

Why was the unique sacrificial rite in Genesis 15 required, and what did it signify? Was it simply a self-maledictory oath on the Lord’s behalf, or was there something deeper going on?

The Oath

The theory that the Lord was taking the curse upon Himself is based on Hebrews 6:13-14:

For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.”

Peter Golding writes:

A self-maledictory oath is the most likely explanation of the incident recorded in Genesis 15 where, at God’s instigation, Abraham takes a heifer, a she-goat and a ram and divides them in the midst, laying each piece one against another. The lamp of fire which passed between the pieces belongs to the same order as the burning bush (Exod 13:21) and the pillar of ire (13:21). It is a symbol of the presence of God, represented here as “cutting a covenant” with Abraham–in other words, God invoking upon himself the covenant curses if his promises should fail.¹Peter Golding, Covenant Theology, 72.

This common explanation does highlight the truth that the fulfilment of the promises rested upon the faithfulness of God rather than Israel, the God who would keep raising Israel from the dead, by grace alone, until they were all fulfilled (Zechariah 4:6). It also understands that the curse was borne by Yahweh Himself in Christ. Yahweh took the Oath and Yahweh would Himself bear its Sanctions. However, it neglects to explain the requirement for animal sacrifices at this point, which are very specific, looking backwards to Noah and forwards to Leviticus. The curse upon sin was always borne by blameless animal substitutes after the sin, but what was the sin in this instance? Why were animal sacrifices required now?

The Ascension

James Jordan explains that the answer is not found in the later (historically-speaking) Covenant oaths but in events found earlier in Genesis. The reason for the animals slain in the Land is discovered in the animals slain in the Garden.

When Adam sinned he was sentenced to die. God killed an animal to provide covering for him, but still he had to leave the Garden. A boundary was set around the Garden that he might not cross on pain of death, for cherubim with flaming sword that turned in all directions were set at the eastern gate of the Garden to guard it. For Adam to get back into the Garden, he would have to ascend past the barrier, through sword and fire. Only then could he serve as God’s palace-servant again. In Leviticus 1, the animal will pass through sword and fire, bringing the adam back into a symbolic Garden.

From this every Israelite knew that it was God and not any adam who would kill the “animal” to provide covering. When the Israelite slaughtered his Nearbringing, he knew that he was only acting a role designed to affirm his faith in what God would someday do.

Two events in the life of Abraham must also be remembered. When God made the covenant with Abram in Genesis 15, five animals were divided (the same five that are brought near in Leviticus; contrast Noah’s offering of all “clean” animals), and God’s smoky presence passed between the parts of the animals. God said that this event linked Abram to the land, from which he had been estranged (the famine in Genesis 12, the weakness of the land in Genesis 13, the wars all over the land in Genesis 14), though that linkage would not take hold for several generations to come. Thus, the two parts of the animals represented Abram and the land. Abram and the land were dead to each other, rent asunder. But now God’s presence would knit them together. Thus, when God’s glory passes between the parts of the animals, it signifies putting them back together again in a new way. In Leviticus 1, putting the sectioned parts of the animal into the Communion Site (traditionally “altar”) signifies the same thing: resurrection, reunification with God and the world, and glorification.²James B. Jordan, Introduction to the Ascensions, Biblical Horizons 143.

The Mediators

While this is extremely helpful, I think it still fails to explain the need for the sacrifices. Much more needs to be made of the link between the barrenness of Sarai and the barrenness of Canaan as expressions of the curses in Genesis 3. Fruitfulness of the land and the womb are the results of faithfulness to God. But Abraham was not unfaithful. Adam’s sin eventually led to the destruction of “all flesh” in a global flood. What was being established in Abraham and Sarah was a microcosmic model of the world, a Social Land surrounded by a Social Sea. As Jordan describes above, Abraham’s estrangement from Canaan follows a familiar threefold pattern, but it is expressed in local events rather than global ones:

In these three trials, Abraham is proven as a priest, a king and a prophet, dealing faithfully and wisely in all three domains. ³Abraham’s behaviour concerning Sarai in Egypt is misinterpreted as a faithless deception, rather than outcrafting the serpent. See James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints, for more discussion. As a result, he is made a father in God’s image, that the seed promised to Adam and Eve might be preserved, and also that his offspring might serve as mediators for the nations even before that seed should arrive to spare the world another Physical annihilation. The Abrahamic Covenant is the heavenly rainbow expressed upon the earth, a local “earth” that would suffer on behalf of all the earth.⁴For more discussion, see Cosmic Language.

Thus, when the Lord tells Abraham that the sins of the Amorites are not yet fully grown, not yet ripe for judgment, we might understand this in regard to all the surrounding nations. The first “Social flood” which Canaan would suffer was the invasion of the tribes of Jacob, four centuries in the future. It is my belief that the animals did not represent a divide between Abraham and the Land, but a divide between Abraham and the nations. These sacrifices were Abraham’s mediation on behalf of those living in Canaan, to whom he had preached the Gospel, proclaiming the name of the Lord (Genesis 12:8; 13:4; 26:25; Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13; cf. Joel 2:32). This is because Genesis 15 not only follows the fivefold Covenant pattern, recapitulating the Creation week, it also recapitulates the history of the world from Adam to Noah:

Now, it must be said here that Israel’s failure to enter the Land ruined the pattern, and a new “washing” was required in the Jordan. But the correspondences do explain the need for substitutionary sacrifices. Ascension also corresponds to Leviticus (the Levites were a kind of Firstfruits who possessed no “Day 3″ Land, since they were its holy “fruits”).

The House

This brings us to an explanation of the five clean animals required by God. They prefigure the Tabernacle, which was itself a microcosmic house that served as a substitute for the sins of Israel and the nations. As the Tabernacle was cruciform, I believe these animals were laid out in a cruciform pattern, but with a very significant deficiency.

Abram had been in the Land for three years, so the animals were three years old, a kind of Firstfruits, flesh and blood as bread and wine. This represents a divided week, the failure of Adam at the center of the sevenfold Testing process, where he seized kingdom without prior priestly submission to God. Thus, these animals represent every fundamental element of the Tabernacle except for the Lampstand, the symbol of God’s domain over Israel, which would serve to enlighten the Gentiles of His kingdom over all nations. The reason it is missing here is that in Abram, Adam’s race was being divided into priests and kings, Jew from Gentile, bread from wine, that the sin of intermarriage might not eliminate a faithful representation of God’s mercy expressed in animal sacrifices, preserving the promise of the Messiah. Thus, this “cutting in half” is not only found in each animal, but in the entire bloody architecture. This “divided man” was the reason the Aaronic priests were bloodied and oiled only on their right ear, thumb and big toe. And it is the reason that wine was never consumed by men in God’s presence until Christ came to reinstitute a better “order of Melchizedek.” On the cross, He would make of the two halves “one new Adam,” bloodied and oiled on both sides to tear down the wall of circumcision and reunite the halves in a priesthood of all nations. So the animals do not represent Abraham and the Land, but prefigure the worship to be established in the priesthood of Aaron.

A heifer three years old

The heifer I have positioned in the place of the Bronze Altar, since it corresponds to the face of the Ox. The heifer represents the earth, in this case, the actual four-cornered Land with its horns representing the witness of blood, faithful worship which would keep “the Sea” at bay. In this case, the animal is female, presumably because the word “eretz” (Land) is feminine, the Creational “womb” so to speak. A heifer is a cow that has not borne a calf, or has borne only one calf. The sacrifice on this Altar is Adamic, however.

A female goat three years old

The female goat represents the Altar of Incense. This also had four horns, but they were the prophetic winds of heaven. The blood from the Bronze “Adamic” Altar of death was daubed on this fragrant “Evian” Altar of resurrection, its savour speaking of the burial spices on the raised body in place of the stink of death. We see the bloody Bronze Altar and the fragrant Incense Altar in Esau and Jacob, outside and inside the tent, with a reference to goat skin thrown in for good measure as Jacob presents himself before the “throne” of his father.

A ram three years old

The ram is the Firstfruits of the Firstfruits (just as the Levites gave a tenth to God of the tenth of Israel). This represents the Table of Showbread, which corresponds to Firstfruits in the Tabernacle pattern. Isaac was the firstfruits of the barren womb of Sarah. Just as the firstfruits of the Land were lifted up, so the firstfruits of the womb were lifted up on Mount Moriah, but substituted with a ram.

A turtledove and a young pigeon

The inclusion of black birds and white birds should remind us of the ark of Noah, physical representations of judgment/assessment, dividing between light and darkness over the waters. These would be represented in the Urim and Thummim in the ephod of the High Priest.⁶See “Return of the Raven” in Sweet Counsel. Yet, here the birds are multiplied. There is more than one black bird, representing the general curse of death, and there are two white birds, representing the Covenant blessing upon the faithful who seek covering under the shed blood. The dove and the pigeon were not cut in half, but instead their necks were broken. They represent the “Head” of this cruciform architecture, and the Head cannot be divided, or crushed, only temporarily separated from the Body. The same thing is observed in Jesus’ graveclothes (John 20:7). Since the dove is the wild animal and the pigeon its domesticated cousin, I believe these represent Land and World, the Spirit’s work in both Jew and Gentile, one with the Law and one without (Romans 3). The “sign of Jonah” (Jonah means dove) is the death of Israel through baptism/submersion for the sake of the nations, the Land for the Sea.

The order of the list of these animals expresses a priestly ascension. It works from the earth/Adam, to Eve, to Eve’s firstborn, to the promise of a combined Jew-Gentile priesthood in heaven, a reinstitution of a “Melchizedekian” or Noahic order in heaven through a grafting process, the cultivated field given new longevity through the grafting in of the wild branches (as we observe in the inclusion of Rahab, Ruth, etc.)

The serpent and the tree

So, what of the missing Lampstand? Moses sees it in the wilderness, and hears the words of Yahweh. In the structure of Genesis 15, that role is usurped by the serpentine Pharaoh of Egypt, representing lawlessness, a wisdom which is not of God. It is no accident that the Lord of the burning bush gives Moses three “serpentine” signs.⁷See Sweet Counsel, 147.

In the greater picture, the Lampstand is the Day of Pentecost, the coming of true kingdom. The animals represent Adam, laid out as a lifeless, empty body awaiting breath from heaven. The five animals form the house, and the fire, in this case a smoking fire pot (the “clouds” or hosts of Israel’s armies) and a blazing torch (the fiery “head” or Captain, Joshua/Jesus) come to fill it. The Head and Body are burnt separately but united by fire in the Ascension offering in Leviticus 1, which recapitulates the Creation Week. Moreover, this new Israel was circumcised outside Jericho before cutting off “all flesh” in that city as a firstfruits to God. If you know your matrix icons, you might notice that the flaming sword icon is positioned at the Laver, not only the site of circumcision but also the spring of Eden, the womb and the Land. In all cultures except the most degenerate, this is the part of the human body which is covered. The architecture of Eden is represented in our bodies as earthly Tabernacles.

The Inheritance

This Covenant with Abraham was entirely fulfilled.

Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And theLord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass. (Joshua 21:43-45)

Since this was, in my thinking, a Covenant which sheltered the Canaanites temporarily, they were accountable to God when Israel returned with Joshua. There are no genocides in the Bible. There are only Covenant Oaths and the resulting Sanctions. Sacrificial blood was offered at the Oath, and if that substitutionary blood was “trampled underfoot,” the human blood would be shed. This is exactly the process we see from the death of Christ to the destruction of Jerusalem, the tearing of the Temple veil to the end of Judaism in AD70, and it is the context of Hebrews 10:29.

So, the conquest of Canaan fulfilled the symbolic sequence in Genesis 15. Yet the Lord works in fractals. He keeps moving the goal posts, just as He did with Adam and Abraham, from the Garden, to the Land, to the World. The Triune pattern is measured out in every part of the Scriptures, including sacred architecture. But there is one facet of Israel’s inheriting the Land which has been overlooked as far as I know, and once again it must be understood in the context of the Noahic priesthood.

Because Ham attempted to steal an inheritance from Noah,⁸See Out of His Belly. his son Canaan would serve Shem as a slave. Yet this is not what occurred during Israel’s sojourn in Egypt after the death of Joseph. Shem was in slavery “in the Land of Ham.” (Egypt is referred to as “the land of Ham” in Psalms 78:51; 105:23, 27; 106: 22; 1 Chron. 4:40.) Not only this, but the divide between priests and kings, first expressed in Cain’s hatred for Abel, is present here in the fact that the Egyptians despised shepherds, requiring the Hebrews to dwell on their own (Genesis 46:34). This fulfills the distance between the serpent and ram in the Abrahamic “Tabernacle.”

While the “seed,” the house of Jacob, was “dying” in Egypt that it might be multiplied as a great harvest, the oak trees planted and wells dug in Canaan by the patriarchs were also bearing fruit, along with the houses and vineyards of the Canaanites. The cursed womb had born a nation in the “grave,” while the cursed Land now promised an abundance (Numbers 13:24). Shem would inherit everything from Ham, but only through a process of death and resurrection. Shem had to die in the Land of Ham (the father) and be resurrected to inherit the Land of Canaan (the son).

Circumcision was tied to the Abrahamic promises concerning the Land and the womb. These ended at the baptism of Christ, the first sign of the dove, a Noahic Jew-Gentile immersion which cut off Canaan forever, and promised instead a heavenly country, a blessing for all nations. But then, Abraham knew that all along (Hebrews 11:16). The rainbow was back in the heavens.

“A baptism which does not discern between the fruit of the womb and the fruit of the tomb is anti-Christ, denying He has come in the flesh.”

This post follows on from Exposed To The Elements.

An online paedobaptist friend commented that he had never heard sacred architecture offered as an argument for credobaptism before. My experience with the brilliant Bible teaching by the various Federal Vision gents is that I get a principle under my belt, then automatically begin to see its implications for all of Scripture. But then numerous times I would be surprised when no one had thought of applying it consistently. The main offender is paedobaptism. Despite their claims, it is a rite that does not spring naturally from Scripture. In fact, it has to be protected from Scripture, from the very principles I have been taught by paedobaptists.

There’s a reason that people with Asperger’s are being employed to find bugs in software. We can hold a lot of data in “working RAM” at once, which means we can “spot the difference” visually. Penelope Trunk writes:

 I have a feeling that what gave me the ability to bridge from a quirky writer to a marketable writer was focusing obsessively on Generation Y. Nobody could memorize the facts as fast as I did, and because they were all in my head I could synthesize them faster than everybody else and come up with trends. [1]

My friend Chris Wooldridge is a data analyst. His job is to find trends in data and present them pictorially. I have no doubt this is why he has picked up the Bible Matrix so quickly and is parsing passages like an old hand. To some degree, this ability requires having all the other key instances of the matrix in a “holding pattern” so they can be overlaid and compared. It is immensely beautiful, and it is one of two reasons why the practice of paedobaptism irks me so much. It is the fly in the ointment, the bug in the software. The Bible Matrix is the DNA of the Scriptures, which, like DNA, have a mechanism of self-correction. The matrix process of maturity rejects paedobaptism in every instance. Not only is the practice never described or commanded in Scripture, forces the redefinition of Christian, Church, Gospel, faith and just about everything else in its perverted path, the very DNA of the Bible treats it as a foreign body to be neutralized, a bug to be exterminated, an error to be corrected. The structure of the Scriptures themselves is as fussy as someone with OCD.

Now that I have many of my readers in defensive mode, I would like to take a look at a very simplified version of the architecture which makes paedobaptism the impossible doctrine. This has to do with the definition of “son of God.” Are sprinkled babies children of God? Both James Jordan and Peter Leithart maintains that the Gospel “redeems” natural patterns. I agree with them to some point. But their conflation of the image with the imager is an unwitting form of idolatry, with infants as the idols. They claim that paedobaptism is a New Covenant version of circumcision, at least as far as defining the boundary of the Covenant people (Jordan rightly says that circumcision is not baptism, and we strangely agree on many other points.) But a son of God is not a son of man. Paedobaptists love to abuse the Covenant with Abraham to support their well-meaning but perverted rite. I want to undermine that by taking us right back to the Garden of Eden.

Jesus called Himself “the Son of Adam,” a fact made clearer by the use of the phrase concerning the prophet Ezekiel, in whose book it appears over 90 times. I believe the reason is that Ezekiel is the only prophet given access to the heavenly Sanctuary, the throne of God. He is made, as Jordan observes, a kind of “rival High Priest in exile,” much as was Jesus many centuries later. The prophet is symbolically slain, falling on his face, then lifted up and filled with the Spirit of God. As a new Adam, he goes through a process of death and resurrection, and the rest of the book describes the same process measured out upon Israel.

But Jesus also called Himself “the Son of God.” This has an entirely different meaning. It is not genealogical, since it does not refer to an earthly father but the heavenly Father. An earthly father is most certainly an image of the heavenly Father, but the two cannot be conflated. The Pharisees who challenged Jesus had Abraham as their earthly father, and the devil as their heavenly father.

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and bhas nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” (John 8:44-47)

Based upon the relationship between the Father and the Son in heaven, that which is at the heart of earthly sonhood is Representation. This is why the Succession step of the matrix process often concerns physical offspring in many Old Testament passages. It refers to genealogical Succession in history, God’s faithfulness to many generations of the faithful. But the New Testament moves the goal posts. Instead of physical offspring, it puts Gospel messengers at this point in every instance. The emphasis has moved from earthly sonhood to heavenly sonhood, from sons of Adam to sons of God. The switch began at the baptism of Jesus, the only Adam who was both.

At Jesus’ baptism, the Father chose Him from among all the other circumcised sons of Israel. It is the same scenario as that which brought about the anointing of David. All the possible choices were circumcised in the flesh, but God looked upon the heart of Jesus. This heart alone pleased Him. David’s name means “Beloved,” and I have no doubt that this is why the heavenly Father says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Since Christ was the only one who truly displayed Priestly submission, He was chosen to be King.

From that moment, Jesus, like David, was no longer under the authority of His earthly father. This was hinted at in the event of Jesus’ disappearance at age 12, a kind of “Firstfruits.” Baptism for every Christian is the point when the individual becomes directly accountable to his new Father, to Christ, and to Christ’s Church. As Jesus did, the baptizand bows to the authority of heaven that he or she might speak with the authority of heaven.

At the instant of Jesus’ baptism, there was only one true Jew, a brand new Adam. Just as Adam was a man without genealogy, whose Father was God, so for Jesus, all heredity, all circumcision and non-circumcision, was left behind in the water of baptism. This included allegiance to Abraham, the earthly father, since the heavenly Father had now revealed Himself for the first time in history.

So, what of circumcision? This is simple, indeed, so simple that it amazes me that so many bright Reformed theologians and Christians have not thought things through with any consistent logic, especially the ones who are aware of the dominion promises in Genesis 2. If Adam was faithful as the son of God, God would make Adam a father. Both the womb and the land would be opened to him, producing their fruit in season, just as Adam had produced the fruits of righteousness, a circumcised heart, to his own Father. In Abraham, the “Great Father” who was by nature barren, both the curse and promise concerning the land and the womb were repeated. Canaan was initially barren, but we will deal with that another time (it’s quite fascinating!) and of course Sarah was barren. Circumcision was given to Abraham because he was faithful. It was a symbolic “pruning” that both the womb and land might be opened. At every point, the Firstfruits was to be given to God, including Isaac. Baptism is a rite not for the inheritance but for the inheritor. The “architectural” background of all the Psalms is Edenic.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
(Psalm 127:3-5)

Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord,
who walks in his ways!
You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands;
you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots around your table.
Behold, thus shall the man be blessed
who fears the Lord.
(Psalm 128:1-4)

You can see from the diagram above that baptism is a rite that concerns circumcision of heart (things above: the Edenic Laver/Spring) that God might bless the believer with fruitfulness (things below: the Bronze Altar-Land). With the coming of Christ in the flesh, the promises to Abraham were fulfilled. The relationship of heredity to the Covenant was removed forever. It no longer mattered whether one was a Jew or a Gentile. The only household is the household of faith. The only sonhood is submission to the Father by the faith of the Son. A baptism which does not discern between the fruit of the womb (Land: below) and the fruit of the tomb (Garden: above) is anti-Christ, denying He has come in the flesh. Why do many of the world’s best Bible teachers, including many friends, fail to see this practice for what it is, especially those who know their way around biblical architecture?

Baptism is thus not about generation but regeneration. James Jordan claims that “regeneration” refers not to individuals but to the regeneration of the world in general, thus unregenerate offspring can be included in this process. But that is not the picture given in Scripture at all. Once again, the image is conflated with the original, the source confused with the result. And all the support given for paedobaptism relies on “Abrahamic” verses, texts about the earthly image. [2] In paedobaptism, the heavenly Father is conflated with earthly fathers, and the heavenly Son who, like Melchizedek has no genealogy, no earthly father, is confused with the sons of Aaron for whom genealogy was crucial.

If the Lord had slain Adam and Eve for Adam’s sin, it is obvious that the fruit of the womb and the land also would have been cut off. But Adam’s death was the source of this lack of natural fruit. Adam’s death had to do with his relationship to the heavenly Father. So baptism is not related to either the fruit of the Land or the fruit of the womb. It has to do with the fruit of righteousness, and these other things are only the result of that initial “Garden” fruit. Jesus’ death as Adam was prefigured in His baptism. He was not sprinkled or poured upon by John. He was submerged, slain, like the entire world during the Physical Flood, like Israel under Babylon and Rome in Social Floods. Only submersion pictures the complete end of the Old Order and the beginning of the New. The dove is never present over the Land, but only over the waters. If you have never been immersed, you have failed to publicly testify as Jesus did, that the old is gone and the new has come.

A paedobaptism is a false testimony. It says that a son of Adam is by nature a son of God. Even Jews would never claim such a thing. Every “begat,” every “bar,” was a testimony to earthly lineage. Even they understood the difference between physical offspring and those who represented not their earthly fathers but the heavenly Father. A son of God is one who has Sanctuary access not by the flesh but by the Spirit because they please God, having been slain and lifted up like Ezekiel, leaving that fiery courtroom as His representative on earth, to divide between light and darkness with his words as Adam did not and Jesus did. Jesus did not come to have earthly sons but heavenly ones (Hebrews 2:13), images of Himself not Physically or Socially but Ethically.

Now, my friends like to claim that their sprinkled children have Sanctuary access because they received the Spirit in their baptism and are now a child of God. Some even claim that infants who have not heard the Gospel have faith in God (the stupidity of this still blows me away. Who needs the Gospel, then?). This all stems from their unwillingness to discern the difference between earthly parents and the Eternal Parent, the image and the reality. Here is an example from my otherwise wise friend Toby Sumpter, who tweeted:

 Christians who spank their kids in love are high sacramentalists: they believe the Spirit saves souls through material means (Proverbs 23:14).

This is as confused as the claim that infants are believers because they trust God on their mother’s breast (Psalm 22:9). The Psalmist conflates the heavenly with the earthly poetically because one leads to the other, but they are not the same thing. The natural comes first, and then the spiritual. It is a process of maturity. The entire point of baptism is that one no longer needs to be spanked by one’s parents because one now serves the Father in heaven. Again, baptism is for the inheritor, not the inheritance, for the earthly father, not his babies. When Jesus blessed the children, who was the baptised one? It was Jesus. Somehow, everyone overlooks the obvious because they are looking for support for something else.

The blindness involved in such teaching mystifies me. Baptism is for heavenly sonhood and confers Sanctuary access as a representative of the Father. The only choice for paedobaptists is to eliminate the efficacy of baptism (and deny Sanctuary access) or to maintain the efficacy and minimise the requirement for heart circumcision. Both are really stupid, unbiblical ideas, and the solution is incredibly obvious. But I have no doubt they’ll keep fighting over this for decades to come, trying to unite heaven and earth by the will of man rather than by the true work of God in the hearts of contrite men and women, relying on badly composed, complicated statements by Reformers whose typological skills were not far removed from the sophistries of Rome, and thinking that because they have been sprinkled, witnessed so many sprinklings, and perhaps even performed their own sprinklings, this perversion must be the work of God. (I would draw a helpful diagram to demonstrate the difference between a womb and a tomb, but I haven’t got a crayon. I’m sure you can work it out.)

I hate paedobaptism because I love the Bible, which spits it out at every opportunity. But I also hate paedobaptism because I love the Gospel of repentance and faith, and an inheritance of the Spirit which expresses itself in willing identification with the sufferings of Christ. If this is offensive to you, you neither understand the promises to Abraham, or the promises in Christ. They are very different things, as different as the heavens are from the earth. They are obscured by well-meaning but carnal doctrine.

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[1] Penelope Trunk, 3 Things you need to know about people with Asperger’s.
[2] With such a misguided foundation, it is little wonder that my friend Luke Welch takes things to such shocking but logical conclusions. Apparently, the children of Christians are like Aaronic priests, who were symbolic sacrifices for sin.

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“Just as Circumcision made impossible a global corruption,
so paedobaptism makes impossible a global Gospel.”

Part 1 here.

With so many young people leaving the Church, it is no wonder that there is a push to renew an understanding of biblical Covenant. Giving our children a profound sense of their “Covenant identity” is a crucial means of re-establishing the Covenant framework which has been neglected. Unfortunately, those pushing for these things are going about it in entirely the wrong way, because they are re-establishing the wrong Covenant.

Covenant Obligation

As Christian parents, we want our children to grow up to be like Abel, and not like Cain. The problem with using baptism to impart a “Covenant identity” is that this is not what baptism is for. Cain and Abel both had the same Covenant identity. Although their roles in worship differed, both were under a similar obligation when it came to faith. Abel was to offer blood to cover, once again, the sin in the Garden; Cain was then to offer the firstfruits of the Land. But Cain pushed in and made his offering first, apparently a refusal to acknowledge the sovereignty of God. This was Pentecost before Firstfruits, kingdom before priesthood, a grasping of dominion without prior submission to God. It was the sin of Adam on a grander scale. [1]

Cain’s rebellion resulted in the establishment of a new identity, a pagan one. The curse upon him, though withheld, became a curse upon his children. The human race was divided into two tribes: a priestly clan which still recognised and worshiped God and a kingly order which did not. Intermarriage corrupted the priesthood and only one family remained submitted to God. The question is this: did those in the fortress of the Cainites no longer have any obligation to God? Of course they did, and eventually the entire civilization died in the Great Flood.

After the sin at Babel, humanity was headed for another flood, but God stepped in and divided the entire race in two through circumcision. A Covenant was established with Abraham and his offspring, with specific promises, that they might eventually be a blessing to the nations outside of this Covenant. Under Moses, the continuity of these promised blessings was bound through the Law, which meant that not only was Israel a “cultivated Land,” she would also be “pruned” from time to time, disciplined by God because of His great love for these children, His “firstborn.” Were the other nations under these Covenant obligations? Not directly. The nations surrounding Israel were blessed or cursed depending upon their treatment of Abraham’s offspring, but Israel was the focus. When Israel sinned, God also used these nations to curse and purify her. In all cases, this Covenant concerned only Abraham’s offspring until it was fulfilled. The Gentiles were under no obligation to either the Abrahamic Circumcision or the Mosaic Law.

Split Identities

Israel’s Covenant identity was not a removal of the obligation of the nations but an expansion of the office of Abel in worship, that is, the offering of representative blood. When it came to actual salvation, an Abrahamic “Covenant identity” simply meant that you were the first to hear. While this Covenant was in force, the Gospel always went first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. Likewise, when judgment came, it came first upon Israel and then upon the nations. But both were still under obligation to God.

The Jew was to hear and believe, and through Israel, Gentiles were also to hear and believe. When it comes to salvation, this has always been the case. Israel’s “Covenant identity” in Abraham was a corporate liturgical office, not salvation itself. Hence, the doctrine of “paedofaith” is a wishful contrivance, an illegitimate hybrid of the promise to the believer and this obsolete Old Covenant sacrificial office. As we see in the prophets, God’s blessings and curses came upon all those who heard Israel’s testimony. In all cases, faith, which came by hearing, would result in works, and God always judged their faith (or lack of it) by their works. Through the testimony of Jonah, Nineveh was saved. Despite the testimony of Nahum, Nineveh was destroyed. If their works were faithful, then they were obviously converted. Regarding their offices, they remained Jews or Gentiles, Abels or Cains, brothers with different gifts but both in the service of God. One could be a believer or an unbeliever regardless of whether one was commissioned to offer blood, or to offer fruits from the ground (kingdom riches). The Old Covenant identity was with regard to ministry, not salvation, just as Abel kept sheep and Cain worked in the field. Both were required to repent and believe. Once the offerings were made, these fulfilled offices became meaningless. Once Christ was offered as better Abel, and the Herodian order judged as greater Cain, circumcision and uncircumcision became meaningless.

A Division of Flesh

The cultural separation of Jew and Gentile was for the purpose of preventing the kind of unity of culture which destroyed the original world in the flood and threatened to destroy the new world of Noah. At a global level, it split humanity irrevocably into Church and State. The usurping of priesthood by kingdom, the co-opting of the Church by the State, was impossible without the breaking down of the “wall of enmity,” circumcision and the Law, the Covenant obligations of the Jews. Though similar sins were committed within the bounds of the circumcision, a global corruption was made impossible through the curses of the Law. The Law put a hedge around the ministry of Abel (Genesis 4), and prevented the “Cainites” from intermarrying with the “Sethites” (Genesis 6) or uniting to build a new Babel. Thus, the identity conferred in circumcision was a Covenant within a Covenant, Abrahamites as a priestly people within a Noahic world, Abels among Cains, sheep among wolves. When Israel’s priests, kings and people behaved like Cainites, God gave them over to the real Cainites for discipline and eventual purging. Just as animals died on Israel’s behalf, so Israel was judged on the world’s behalf. Israel would always die as the firstborn, a first fruits of blood separated from the rest of the world. But Israel, unlike the other nations, would also rise from the dead.

The Covenant identity of Israel, conferred due to the personal faith of Abraham, was a sacrificial obligation which was fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus is the sacrificial flesh of Israel, offered in faith on behalf of all nations. The Jewish identity, the offering of the blood of the firstborn, finally ascended to heaven in Christ. True priesthood was finally accomplished and true kingdom could come, a dominion sourced in submission to God and priestly service. The end of Circumcision came because the Abelic ministry was completed in Christ. The end of the Temple avenged not only the blood of Christ but also the blood of Abel. The end of the Jewish identity necessarily ended the Gentile identity, as the submersion of the Land makes the demarcation of “sea” meaningless. All the kingdoms of the world, offered to Jesus at the hand of Satan, are now His at the hand of the Father.

Now that this division of offices is gone, the only Covenant identity which remains is the one common to all men, as it was common to both Cain and Abel, the obligation to repent and trust God. The New Covenant did not introduce a souped-up Abrahamic identity, a new division of fleshly offices. It fulfilled and exalted one which already existed: repentance and faith, something which was always available to both Jew and Gentile, who in the larger picture were under the same Covenant in Noah. This fact was the basis for the decision of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 (See A Change Of The Law).

Since the ministry of shedding blood is now fulfilled, there is no such “Covenant-within-a-Covenant” identity in existence. With the Old Covenant completed, there is no “Covenant identity” outside of the call to repent and believe. Since the world is no longer divided into the offices of Jew and Gentile, there is no need to signify separate obligations. Logically, baptism cannot confer a Covenant obligation, because we are all under the New Covenant obligation to repent and believe. Thus, baptism can neither make a “Covenant child,” nor confer salvation in any sense upon an infant.

A Global Covenant

Those who believe that baptism, whether of an infant, a child or an adult, puts that person “into Covenant with God” have not understood what makes the New Covenant new. Circumcision marked out a cultural “office,” the shedding of blood, an obligation which has now been fulfilled in Christ. Baptism marks out a personal response, the answer of a good conscience towards God, which has also now been fulfilled in Christ. But these are not the same. One is death, and one is resurrection. One is an objective execution, the other a subjective profession.

The idea that baptism puts somebody “into Covenant with God” in the way that circumcision put Abraham’s seed into Covenant with God, not only limits the scope of its obligation to the confines of the Church, it leads to the mistaken belief that evangelism is about unbelievers joining the Covenant with its obligations rather than responding to the Gospel because they are already condemned. Evangelism is not an extension of the New Covenant obligation across the world, as though the nations were joining some sort of renovated Old Covenant Israel. God forbid. Evangelism is for the purpose of a response to that obligation, a response which confers complete fulfillment of those obligations on one’s behalf by Christ.

So, how do we give our children a “New Covenant identity”? By teaching them of their “Adamic” obligation to Jesus, one which they possess simply by being born, and that this “death-note” was fulfilled by Christ. They are not born Christians, but neither are they born pagans, because the Gospel sees to it that the world is no longer divided in such a way. It challenges every identity by proclaiming the one common to all.

Using baptism to signify some kind of legal obligation between a child and God is an unwitting testimony that Christ has not come in the flesh, that the ministry of bloodshed is not complete, that the blood of Abel has not been avenged. It makes the Church a wall of flesh between God and the nations rather than a torn veil, a door open to the rebel in us all.

Paedobaptism gives to the world a false picture of both the work of Jesus and the prophetic office of each Christian, the profession of one’s faith. Paedobaptism puts the unbeliever outside the obligations of the New Covenant, which are repentance and faith. It basically tells the world to go and build a city, because God is concerned only with His “Covenant people,” and has not given all the kingdoms of the world to His Son. Thus, paedobaptism not only confers upon infants membership in a Covenant which no longer exists, and thus gives them a false identity by treating repentance and faith as though it were an inherited “office” like that of the Jew, it makes the Church a closed veil between the obligation of all people and the throne of Jesus, the Open Door who Himself is the New Covenant.

There is no “identity” which is outside of the New Covenant, and this is the basis for evangelism. Just as Circumcision made impossible a global corruption, so paedobaptism makes impossible a global Gospel.

NEXT POST: Raising Canaan

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[1] I believe that if Cain had not killed Abel, a third son would have been the Prophet, rather than Seth, a replacement priest. This incomplete architecture was fulfilled in the three sons of Noah. See The Last Sin.

“Modern commentators seem to overlook the promise of children in Genesis 1, and how these unmentioned ‘innocents,’ yet in Adam’s loins, are silent but crucial characters in Genesis 3.”

When Paul refers to Abraham as the father of all who believe, the one through whom all nations would be blessed (Romans 4:9-22), we must be prepared to interpret his inspired words through the lens of the House of God, the ever-present architecture of Eden.

The Name of the Father

God’s household in heaven was a tent of servants—the angels—but there was only one Son, through whom came all Creation. This means that the first verses of John’s Gospel, which describe the pre-incarnate Word, can tell us a great deal about God’s intentions for Adam, the incarnate image of God. All that Jesus was in heaven, Adam was to be on earth:

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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