And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed… Blessed…”
(Matthew 5:2-11)

Part 1 is here.

Just so, the first natural words formed a testimony given before the first natural audience. They follow the structure of the Ten Commandments. [1] This was the first prophecy.

Reading the Ten Words back into the first speech by the first human Lawgiver also shows a movement from the natural to the ethical. It recapitulates the movement from the “sacrifice of blood” to the “sacrifice of praise,” from the Tabernacle of Moses to the Tabernacle of David, etc. Eve is not spoken to. She is referred to in the third person. Her naming is a legal blessing and witness before God. You might notice that this stanza is the Sanctions of the greater pattern, and Succession follows in vv. 24-25, with the requirements for the foundation of a new household, a new “delegation.”

You might also notice that each horizontal row moves from Adam to Eve, and the entire process also moves vertically from Adam to Eve. Adam is protology (Genesis) and Eve is eschatology (Revelation). The Woman is always the “at last.”

The Veil of Flesh

Adam did not need to learn to speak (or presumably, to write). He was physically (naturally) mature. But now (“at last”) for Adam, the natural was also bifurcated. It was Social. Adam was now corporate. For the Physical to become Ethical, there must be a Social in between, that is, a veil of flesh. Bone is to flesh as law is to love. Adam is structure and Eve is glory. The spiritual/ethical words spoken by God were to become the “environment of fire” between them, for good or ill, blessing or cursing.

We see this triune order in the architecture of the first three chapters of Genesis.

In Genesis 1, Adam is a Physical creature, part of the created order. In Genesis 2, the focus zooms in on Adam to tell his story as a Social being. This involves cutting flesh and reuniting flesh, something which did not occur with the animals, whose law is earthly, tied to the blessing or cursing of the ground. Genesis 3 tells the story of Adam as an Ethical creature, one who is not only to represent the created order to God above, but to represent the heavenly order to the creation below. The movement is from being, to knowing, to loving. Of course, loving (of God and of Eve) is where he fails.

This brief history of Adam (the individual) becomes the history of corporate Adam. As discussed, the first Covenant was tied to nature, thus all nature which had “breath” was destroyed. But after Noah, Covenant history moved from the Physical to the Social. The cutting of circumcision avoided another “natural” destruction by creating a microcosmic “world model” in Abraham. Just as it was for Adam, this was a time of promises and foreshadowings. The subsequent history deals with a Social creation, that is, Israel and her Tabernacle as a microcosm of the Physical world. The revelation at this point is fundamentally Social. The expectations of the Law concern external obedience. The fight against evil is a fight against its expression in the flesh, both within Israel and through holy wars with other nations. When Israel sins, the flood that comes is not water, but the restless sea of the nations, first Babylon, then Rome. This explains why the prophets use “creation” language in their “social” judgments. The wrath against all flesh would fall upon a “firstfruits,” Israel as God’s firstborn. [2]

The final world model was Christ (“Now is the judgment of this world” [John 12:31]). In Jesus’ baptism and the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost (head and body), history moved from a Social architecture (based upon circumcision) to an Ethical revelation. Consequently, the Law also changed. The “external” Laws of Moses were replaced by the indwelling Law of Christ, expressed in the Sermon on the Mount.

The serpent was finally crushed, and the revelation given to us now is the mind of Christ, not an inflexible moral code but an organic, living, adaptable one (which is why the Pharisees had so much trouble with Jesus — they did not understand the Spirit of the Law). Jesus fulfilled the ethical demands of the “Social law” and began the age of a different kind of Ethics, the era of obedience in the Spirit. [3]

History in Adam

Jesus, as a blameless Adam, became the mouth of God, The Prophet Like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15-19; John 1:20-21). He breathed on His disciples with natural breath, a liturgical act prefiguring their reception of the breath of the supernatural Spirit after His ascension. He was the first “Angel of the Lord” who not only took on human form, but took that human form, that flesh, justified, into heaven, to represent the entire earth in the heavenly court (see Part 1). He then shared that Spirit with the disciples who would be a new kind of “heavenly visitor,” founding a new microcosmic Social model, the Church.

So, the pattern of the history of mankind follows the shape founded in the creation of Adam.

Now, although the process is chiastic, it is also a progression. As with all good chiasms, the correspondences in the second half are developments upon their counterparts in the first half. Eve is a “development” beyond Adam. He is protological. She is eschatalogical.

So the original Physical world of Adam and Noah was not as glorious as will be the final Physical restoration. Moreover, and here’s the rub, the Social world of Israel-according-to-the-flesh was not as glorious as this fragrant new Social world of the Church. If we overlay this “all history” cycle upon the process we observed in Genesis 2:7, we can see that Israel is to the Church as the formed shape of Adam in the dust was to Adam breathing, speaking, naming. Of course, the same pattern is found in Adam’s qualification for the heavenly breath.

Since the process in the cycle above is cumulative (as is the entire Bible), we should modify it to express this.

The Spirit becomes the heart of a new society, then that new Spirit-filled society becomes the heart of a new physical order. We see this prefigured in God’s Ethical preparation of Israel before her inheritance of the Land of Canaan. But the first Pentecost was a Pentecost of death. It was much like the disqualification of Adam, who like Aaron, failed to speak against the shiny beast and his strange fire. The Last Pentecost changed everything.

The new social body is not like the old social body which concerned the cutting of flesh. It is a body of those indwelt by the Spirit because their hearts have been cut. It is not about the cutting of Adam to construct a bride (circumcision). This New Covenant body does what Adam was supposed to do. It does not represent the Physical creation to God, nor represent a “forming” Social moral code to its counterpart. Filled with the Spirit, it represents God to the Social and Physical orders with plenipotent authority — the mind of Christ. [4] Baptism is about mediation and representation as a co-regent with Christ. The New Covenant sociology is entirely different to the Old. It works from within, not from without.

As mentioned, to complete the chiasm the physical order must be restored. This is not what we are working towards because it is beyond our power. Those who want to argue about “Natural Law” are confused about the triune construction of reality. Natural Law is still corrupted, as reflected in our own bodies, in the animal kingdom, and in the corrupting autonomy of certain “natural” processes, which have become laws unto themselves. Our domain is Social. It is the transformation of individuals and culture. The natural laws themselves, and indeed the “natural breath,” are still instruments of cursing, which is why the last enemy that will be destroyed is death, when every natural mouth will be stopped. AD70 was only the end of the old Social order, not the end of the corrupted physical order, although each level is a type of the other. (The “Covenant Creationists”, confusing the “social” flood of AD70 with the “physical” flood of Noah, want to cut the beginning and end off this chiastic process. [5])

History as architecture

The difference between the Abrahamic social model and the Christian one is the difference between the Bronze Altar (earthy – sacrifice of blood) and the Incense Altar (heavenly: elders – sacrifice of praise). It, like Adam’s prophecy, is the move “from silence to song” which we see prefigured in the breaking up of the Mosaic Tabernacle and its reconstruction as the Tabernacle of David.

Between these two altars is the Laver, water contained in bronze, a purifying “lake of fire.” All this leads to my point, which concerns the definition of what a Christian is in the light of the architecture of the Scriptures. If baptism defines the Church as a “slightly upgraded” Abrahamic body, so that it includes infants, what did Pentecost achieve? Is the Church just a corpse washed? Or is there also an Ethical transformation, a new nature received as a gift and heralded by faithful confession?

If the Church is basically the same kind of body as Old Covenant Israel, then Pentecost did nothing. Membership of the “body” begins with faithfulness to a moral code rather than with the indwelling of a moral life, the Spirit of God. Paedobaptism makes nonsense of the architecture inherent in every passage, at every level, of the Bible.

If we follow the order intended in Eden, the gift of the Holy Ghost can only be received by those who have taken the first step of obedience, the one upon which Adam stumbled. This is exactly what we see in Jesus’ baptism. The Father’s pleasure was due to His prior obedience. He was certainly blameless before then, as Adam’s children would have been, but the actual gift of “representing God to others” is for those who truly image God and are subsequently given the authority of God.

In the Old Testament, we see the Spirit “coming upon” certain people to gift them for service, but never an “indwelling” of their flesh. The only indwelt house was the one which was truly clean, the Tabernacle, beginning with its foundation in the sacrifices of Abraham for the Land of Canaan [6]. Not only was the Law external but lawful cleanliness was external. Jesus was the first clean human, and the first permanently clean house. Israel, on the whole, fixated with the externals based upon circumcision, a Social divide, rejected Him, blaspheming the Spirit, and she was filled with demons instead.

To claim that New Covenant conversion and baptism does not follow the same pattern found in every other “forming and filling” process found in the Bible is to ride roughshod over the ways of God. Fire and water, baptism and the Spirit, are for mediators between heaven and earth, for the elders, prophets, witnesses, musicians who are not only welcome in God’s court, but welcome the nations (including infants) into God’s court that they may minister to them.

So when you are tempted to baptize an infant, it is the flesh lusting against the Spirit. It the claiming of a spiritual inheritance through fleshly, unethical means: prophesying “peace” when there is no peace. The New Covenant is about those who are indwelt by God, not those who “set apart” and cut the flesh in mere anticipation, as did the Jews.

Those who maintained an allegiance to the first Pentecost over the second, and held onto an an obsolete genealogical inheritance from an earthly father, also rejected peace with God and true sonship. Because they were unwilling to be a blessing to all nations, the other promises, the open Land and the open womb, were taken away (Matthew 13:12). Contrary to the delusions of paedobaptists, the New Covenant is not about a pregnant Woman but a resurrected, ascended, prophetic Man.

While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:3)

What peace there is, is not fundamentally Social. It is fundamentally ethical, spiritual. It is announced, by the Gospel, from God in heaven to the ears of our children on earth from our own clean lips as baptized mediators, those who are hybrids of heaven and earth, New Covenant “angels.” [7] All the Lord’s people are now prophets, as Moses desired. The true Church is not only visible and tangible, it is audible. It is not only formed but filled and prophesying the future. The Scriptures never confuse or conflate the speakers with the hearers, and neither must we. Paedobaptism is the carnal expression of carnal thinking, confusing bone and flesh with witness, protology with eschatology, Delegation with Vindication.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:8-9)

We must not be like those who confused their Physical, Social circumcision with the Ethical circumcision, the repentance required by God.

They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.
(Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11)

Art: Bryan Ahn, Sermon on the Mount
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[1] See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key for the reasons behind this architectural arrangement of the Ten Words. See also No Common Ground for their systematic (architectural) reversal by the secular state.
[2] See Cosmic Language.
[3] See The Ethics of the New Testament.
[4] See Images of God.
[5] See Covenant Creationism.
[6] See A Man of Beasts.
[7] See Shekinah People.

“The solution here is not, as Calvin believed, to dress the New Covenant’s ethical maturity in the puerile clothing of paedobaptism.”

In The Failure of the American Baptist Culture [PDF], James Jordan, Ray Sutton and others expose the rot at the heart of baptistic theology, which is inherently man-centred. The authors call us from a view of salvation in isolation to a wider vision of the meaning of baptism, which signifies the broader realities of the Covenant of Grace. I learned a great deal about history and Reformed theology, and thoroughly recommend it to you. In my view, however, they don’t go far enough. A call to understand the vital historical connection between circumcision and baptism certainly deals with the errors of the Anabaptists, but when rightly understood, the progressive nature of revelation also exposes the use of paedobaptism as a connection with the Old Covenant as entirely bogus.

Fractal Nature

We have discussed the process of maturity as consisting of physical, social and ethical. This occurs at many levels. In each case, one is given being, then one is given authority by Covenant (a legal and relational contract, consisting of Law and Love), and finally one is called to nurture and protect those in one’s care. We see this threefold pattern in the Garden of Eden. Then we see it multiplied (as a 3 x 3) in the three domains of Garden, Land and World. Each domain has a “horizontal” progression and a “vertical” one. [1]

In the chapter “Calvin’s Covenantal Response to the Anabaptist View of Baptism,” Peter Lillback notes that Calvin rejected credobaptism because it classified circumcision and baptism as “carnal” and “spiritual” signs respectively.

Since this rejection demanded that the Old Testament covenant be made into a material or carnal covenant – circumcision was not a spiritual symbol – several important doctrines associated with the covenant were as a result severely injured. If the Anabaptist basis for rejecting infant baptism prevailed, then there would be no Old Testament progressive revelation and preparation for the Messiah. Since the Old Testament covenant was only material, Christ would be never present before them, and so God would in essence have mocked them by withholding salvation from them. Just as serious, there would have been no Old Testament counterpart of the grace of justification which was founded upon Christ. If such a carnal covenant were correct, Paul’s argument on the example of Israel’s punishment for disobedience supported by the equality of sacraments of the Old and New Covenants would be utterly in error. And every bit as unthinkable, the Word of God present in the covenant formula would be severed from eternal life. It is because of these resulting errors that Calvin can speak of infant baptism as a safeguard of Scripture and doctrine. If it is taught, the continuity of Scripture in the one divine covenant of grace is affirmed. For Calvin, there is one covenant which is constant throughout Scripture. To reject infant baptism is to deny the unity of the covenant and thus to result in such confusion. (p. 193) [2]

How can I maintain that, even before the Fall, nature and “supernature” were distinct elements and avoid the severance of the Old Covenant from the New? It seems to me that the problem lies in a failure to understand organic growth. At every point in my life, I am complete, and yet, throughout the process of life, there is progress, there is continuity. A male is a boy, an adolescent and then a man. But a man is not a boy, and a boy is not a man. The prelapsarian world, the Old Covenant world, the New Covenant world, are all stages in a single process, growing like a body. At every stage, the Covenant is complete. Each stage is physical, social and ethical. And yet, like a human life, the early stages are predominantly physical, the middle stages predominantly social, and the final stages predominantly ethical. The solution here is not, as Calvin believed, to dress the New Covenant’s ethical maturity in the puerile Mosaic clothing of paedobaptism. That is not continuity; it is retardation. In this respect, paedobaptism is like the modern habit of men dressing as boys to express their shirking of adult responsibilities.

So, the key is to understand the fractal nature of the life of the Covenant, which brings us to the real solution to the problem.

Ray Sutton rightly makes much of the objective standard of the Covenant being the fix for the subjective spirituality of fallen human beings. Forming always comes before filling. The hard edges of the walls of the house make for the comfort, safety and freedom of those within. But the hard edges of the Mosaic Law have been replaced by the Law of the Spirit. The letter of the Law, written on stone under Moses, then written on flesh after the captivity (Jer. 31:31-34 [3]), is now alive in the Spirit. If this is the case, what exactly are the hard edges of the New Covenant house?

Excommunication as Architecture

One thing I have really appreciated from these authors is their revival of an understanding of New Covenant excommunication. The problem is, according to them, one can be born physically into the New Covenant and then excommunicated “spiritually” for an unwillingness to repent of unethical behavior. Conflating generation with regeneration might appear to solve some problems that credobaptists have, but it causes untold problems elsewhere.

The walls and gates of the New Covenant are Spirit-filled people. The dividing line between those inside and those outside is ethical maturity. It is the understanding that I am sinful and Jesus Christ is righteous. This can only be revealed by the Spirit. More than that, however, it goes beyond this objective legal truth to a subjective relational truth, completing the Covenant process, and uniting Old and New as necessary parts of the whole. Church membership requires an ethical response, which begins with repentance and confession. In confession, I stand with God, legally, and in His court, against myself and against the devil.

This means that excommunication is simply identifying someone who has wittingly or unwittingly masqueraded as an angel of light. It means they are bread that is not cooked through and must be returned to the oven, put once again under the sound of the Gospel: repent and believe. If they will not be cut ethically (“cut to the heart”), then they must be cut away socially. If they still do not repent, God will cut them off physically.

Guarding the Spring of Life

The New Covenant gathering is an ethical gathering. It is all of the previous Covenant eras snowballed into one. It is most certainly physical, a visible body of gathered people. It is most certainly social, because we are to be mediators in prayer and care for each other, for our children and for the helpless. But it is predominantly ethical and the change in the Covenant sign communicates that progression. This means that baptism to circumcision is as a judge’s gown to a family likeness. Each of us was formed to be filled. The fact that there are truly retarded people who may not be able to understand or confess is no excuse to retard the process of Covenant maturity. We minister to them as God’s mediators and leave them to His mercy, because, believe it or not, He is merciful. We must not lower the bar for the New Covenant to mere physical attendance or social interaction. The divisions of flesh are torn away and God is after our hearts.

Still Cutting the Flesh

We see this threefold process in the Tabernacle and in the sacrificial rites. The animal “is” (being), then it is “set apart” (sanctified) and cut (social – circumcision), and finally the holy fire descends to “transform” it. If we maintain a “social” baptism, our understanding of Covenant is no better, typologically speaking, than the priests of Baal or the first century “mutilation.” Paul wished that they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves. I don’t believe that paedobaptists are like these godless people. What I am saying is that our use of the New Covenant sign should clearly reflect the ongoing ethical maturity, received by faith, which we are teaching and preaching.

The Ark Carried on Human Legs

Israel’s festal calendar, like the Creation week, moved from physical light to social light to ethical light. [4] The final step is Sukkoth, Clouds, God’s people as miniature glory clouds, with bridal fire visible from within. God’s law has been satisfied and He is now pleased to dwell within each individual and gather them as His cloud, a corporate dwelling. He smells a pleasing aroma and feels at home. Only the regenerate person is on the same page as God. The only baptism that makes sense of all the biblical types and patterns is credobaptism, a rite that makes one a righteous judge, one of the elohim, who have the mind of God and are therefore many but one. Under the New Covenant, it is our “ethical” (spiritual) sameness which brings about our physical and social unity, not the other way around. We meet with the saints because, like God, we discern a spiritual likeness. That, and only that, is the sociology of the New Covenant. Baptism is for the Shekinah people, those with permanent access to the Cloud. A New Covenant saint is a union of heaven and earth, of flesh and of Spirit, a living sacrifice. To divorce these with either baptistic gnosticism (Spirit) or paedobaptistic carnality (flesh) is to put asunder what God finally joined together in Christ.

The Two Births as Architecture

Finally, here is another diagram which I hope explains the “fractal” nature of the Covenants, and allows both a continuity and a discontinuity.

When I explained my position to a friend recently, he commented that it is “the Federal Vision on steroids,” which describes it perfectly. The Federal Vision has understood the Old Covenant structures but applied them as an inherently social sign rather than an inherently ethical sign. In the diagram on the left, the blood is the blood of the sacrifice applied to the four horns of the Altar. The altar symbolized Israel, a single nation, and in that case it was the blood of circumcision. You might notice the correspondence between the firstborn male (corners) and the firstborn animal (horns). Circumcision divided Israel from the other nations. When Christ came, that division was torn down. The four cornered altar gave way to a round laver. But the altar was not removed, only displaced and enlarged. All nations are now being offered to God in Christ.

This brings us to the second diagram, where the four horns are now the entire social world, Jew and Gentile, all nations. The blood is now the blood of Christ. This means that, and please listen here, all nations are now under Covenant. All men everywhere are commanded to repent. All children in every nation are Covenant children. All men, women and children across the world are now under the obligations of the New Covenant. The New Covenant sign marks out the priesthood within this new global “Land,” the regenerate within the merely “generate.”

For the Federal Vision crowd, this means that your baptism is redundant. It also means that the Covenant realities you have unearthed for us from the Old Testament put both baptistic and paedobaptistic errors to death. And yet, it is Good News.

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[1] This chart is from Bible Matrix III: The House of God. It shows that the threefold Ethics stage of the Covenant is a microcosm of, and contained within, the fivefold Social Covenant and the sevenfold Physical Creation. (This also destroys Covenant Creationism, which conflates the physical and social rather than the social and ethical, but that’s another story.)
[2] Lillback does in fact go on to share Calvin’s many reasons for the obvious discontinuities, and they align in with what I have presented here. Yet in all this he fails to grasp the individual experience as an expression of the macrocosmic history, an observation which would unite all of his isolated observations together as descriptions of a single organism, and also explain why there was no “Covenant sign” required before the circumcision of Abraham. It also leaves him with no sound explanation for the move from one Covenant sign to another.
[3] Calvin mistakenly sees the citation of this text in Hebrews as interpretation rather than application. Its context is clearly the Restoration Era.
[4] This supports James Jordan’s assertion that Adam and Eve sinned on Day 6, failing to enter into God’s rest on Day 7.

“In Genesis 1, God creates the world in six days, through certain steps. Then He creates human beings out of ‘world,’ and human beings made out of world are going to live like ‘world’ does. They are going to go from darkness to light, formlessness to form; they are going to marry and take dominion. They are going to become like lights ruling over the earth. They’re going to live in 24 hour cycles. They will undergo times when God pulls them apart and puts them back together in new ways–all because they are made out of world. And these are all steps of glorification.” — James B. Jordan (The Bible You Never Read)

Some Christians assert that Adam was not the first man, only the first man in Covenant with God. [1] This means that the judgments upon such a Covenant could only be social, not “Creational.” They could only fall upon those under Covenant, not the “pre-Adamic” people from which this Covenant separated Adam. This assertion must be made to support the view that the Great Flood was only a local event, destroying only the “Adamites,” not all people on the planet. Does this assertion have any support in Scripture? Apparently yes, but factually no.

The problem is that, although all Covenants are social in one sense, that is, between God and people, there are differences in the domains. Covenant history looks like this:

CREATIONAL

SOCIAL

PERSONAL

SOCIAL

CREATIONAL

This first Covenant was between God and the world. World stuff was shaped, brought to life, and walked and talked in Adam. This Covenant was Creational.

ALL FLESH

The Covenant-making in Genesis 1 was not a Covenant made with heaven and earth. It was a Covenant that made heaven and earth, and the final step in its glorification was the Creation of Man. This was a Covenant made with “all flesh,” and if all flesh failed, all flesh would die. Did all flesh sin? No, but its representative did.

The phrase “all died in Adam” wasn’t limited to people. Animals died too. What would be the point–Covenantally, let alone practically– of the Lord gathering animals into an ark if the animals were not under Covenant. Adam had named them as their global representative.

The flood judgment involved the entire physical world because Adam was the representative of the entire physical world. He was not simply the representative of “the Adamites.” His Creation was a part of the Creation, which is not the case if the Adamic Covenant was not only ceremonial (as all later Covenants were) but also Creational.

Adam was made of world. He was the world “doing Covenantal stuff.” He was not only in the world but of the world. So, when the time came for judgment, the entire world had to be destroyed.

Adam’s sin was temporarily covered. Cain’s sin was temporarily covered. But the time came when sin could no longer be covered. When all domains (Garden, Land and World) were corrupted, the world, not just the people, had come to maturity. The world, not just the people, was fruit ripe for judgment. Was it good to eat?

The Great Flood was the end of Adam’s representative role of the physical creation. Noah was invested as the new representative, again, not merely over a certain people among other nations, but over the world. The Flood was not simply a local judgment of a certain people. A local flood means that all did not die in Adam.

Noah’s Covenant was also a Covenant made with all flesh. As Adam’s Covenant failed in Garden, Land and World, Noah’s succeeded in the Garden (judging Ham’s offspring) but failed in the Land (Babel). Before another Flood could occur (World), God stepped in and tore humanity in half. By His word, he called a Man out of the world. Abram would be in the world but not of the world.

IN THE FLESH

Just as the Sethites and Cainites were divided, so now Jew and Gentile would be divided. This time, God would keep the Covenant carriers from intermarrying with unbelief and abdicating their Covenant office.

This calling out put a temporary barrier, a veil, a wall, between Adam and the physical Creation. The first Covenant not made with “all flesh” was not until Genesis 12. Instead of cutting off all flesh, the flesh of Abram was cut off. It began the process of putting sin to death in the flesh. The Covenant scope was narrowed from the created order to a social order. Humanity was put into a deep sleep, and blood was spilt.

THE POINT OF CIRCUMCISION

Unlike the first two Covenants, the Abrahamic Covenant is what I call “social” because it set one nation, one genealogy, apart from all the others. Abram was called out from other men. That is what some Christians want to do with Adam. But was Adam simply called out from other men? No. We can’t take the traits of the Abrahamic Covenant and apply them to the Adamic and Noahic Covenants. The latter two were global in scale. They were not social divisions, otherwise circumcision has no significance whatsoever.

Circumcision, the cutting of Abraham’s flesh, was the “division” of Adam on a global scale. Being a bloodied, sacrificial wanderer meant there was a pure Adam mediating between heaven and earth, a place that was set apart between the throne of God and the physical world, moving about like the Tabernacle, a flying scroll, a bit of physical world stuff cut off–quarantined–from the physical world. In the grand scheme of things, Covenant had moved from the court of the Gentiles (nations) to the Holy Place. The Creation Temple was protected from judgment by a substitutionary, microcosmic Temple, a veil of flesh.

SOCIAL FLOODS

The prophets often used Creational terminology for this Holy Place which represented the Creation and kept it from being destroyed. When Israel’s sins were filled up, mature, it was the Tabernacle and Temple, not the physical world, that were torn apart. The “floods” under this social Covenant were floods of Gentiles: Babylonians and Romans. To conclude that because these “social” floods were local the Great Flood was also local  is to miss the “mediatory” point entirely. Israel was the bulkhead between God’s wrath and a physical, Creational judgment.

Adam’s and Noah’s Covenants were global. They concerned dominion of the physical Land and Sea. Abraham’s Covenant was social. This social, symbolic “Land and Sea” (Jews and Gentiles) didn’t begin in Adam but in Abraham. And it ended in AD70. AD70 was the end of Israel’s representative role for the nations, and the end of a “social” Land and Sea.

ALL THINGS NEW

The substitutionary structures were fulfilled eventually in the body of Jesus, in a deep sleep. In Jesus, the Covenant moved from the Holy Place into the Most Holy, from a social Covenant to a personal one.

In Jesus, all Creation was legally slain and legally resurrected–not just Adam, and the people, but the physical order also. He is a three level ark. At Jesus’ ascension, the “world stuff” was now in heaven, the physical body of Christ, justified flesh doing “three-level” Covenant stuff on our behalf, and on behalf of not just the people but of the entire Created order.

Now that those “social” substitutes are gone, as well as the body of Jesus (“personal”), all men everywhere are commanded to repent, but the outcome will not be limited to the world of men.

At Pentecost, Christians began representing the social (Jew-Gentile) world in the courtroom of God. This new Creation broke down the old social divide, the “wall of enmity,” until the Covenantal “Land and Sea” were again the physical land and sea. The world groaned until its firstfruits–the first resurrection, the revealing of the true sons of God, the Christians. Yet it groans still, because the harvest is not complete.

The new physical world, contained in Jesus, created a new social order. This Spirit-filled social order will mature eventually into a new physical order. As mediators, we are in the world but not of the world, yet the world will be ours. The CREATIONAL – SOCIAL – PERSONAL – SOCIAL – CREATIONAL chiasm will be finished in the physical world at the second resurrection. [2] The remaining physical disconnect is temporary. One day, the often venomous physical world will no longer be trying to kill us. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

History will end as history began, with a Creational judgment. The entire physical realm will again be ripe, mature. The Lord will taste it and see that it is good. In fact, He will judge it to be very, very good.

“…in the chiasm of redemption
the first shall be last, and the last first.”
Peter J. Leithart.

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[1] See also Biologos’ Jenga Bible.
[2] See A New Heavens and a New Earth.

Micah Martin (brother of one of the authors of Beyond Creation Science), has kindly read Bible Matrix II and written about my adherence to the Genesis account of Creation as both Covenant and history (i.e. the account is not simply an account of the physical world being given a Covenantal purpose as a Temple, but also its actual Creation). There is much that we agree on, but the disagreement on this subject couldn’t be sharper, or of more importance.

He writes:

I received a copy of Bible Matrix II by Mike Bull.  (I would like to thank Mike publicly for sending me a copy free of charge. I very much appreciate it.)

Like Bible Matrix, Bull relies heavily on James Jordan’s approach and has the same un-questioned young earth creationist presupposition.  On a positive note, this book will open the full-preterist door to many astute readers.

However, I found this incredible quote on page 229:

Covenant is the key to Creation.  The original firmament [which I thought was the atmosphere according to the YEC paradigm, my own comment] is the outer shelter, the physical elements, the macrocosmic “Temple”… [1]

The next paragraph begins:

So, all Creation is Covenantal, but we cannot divorce Covenant from history.  It began with the physical world and will end with its physical restoration: (Emphasis his)

Haven’t we heard that before?

I would note that Bull never backs up this claim.  At one point he cites Chilton regarding 2 Peter but then just adds that it foreshadows the “real” new heavens and earth.  Again, with not exegetical proof.

It is becoming apparent that the entire Partial Preterist world is precariously positioned on the incredibly weak foundation of YEC fundamentalism.  It is even more hilarious when one considers the connections between YEC fundamentalism and Dispensationalism.

Add to that, the fact that the people who are winning the origins battle (like Pete Enn’s, biologos.org, John Walton) do not have an eschatology that fits their protology and I would say invest in Covenant Creation/Eschatology.  Eventually it will have cornered both markets! There really is no where else to go.

In the book, I included a slightly revised version of the chiasm of history presented here, plus an expanded explanation of it. The problem with the Covenant Creationists is their insistence that the Creation account and the Noahic flood were not global Covenantal events, but only local Covenantal events.

I can see their argument, but there are two problems with it. Firstly, Creation and Noah are brackets around one era, an era that defines the terminology of the rest of the Bible. After the failure of Babel, history moves to a “social” definition of Covenant, a nation that is separate from the other nations, a national “Land” raised above the international “Sea.”

So, although there are parallels between the flood and AD70 (as Jesus states), this is because there are other structures going on within this chiastic history. The Gentile “flood” of AD70 and the Gentile “flood” of Babylon are equivalent floods. And guess what? Both of them use Noahic symbols. [2] So to claim that the Great Flood and AD70 are equivalent events shows an ignorance of the Old Testament.

So, where dispensationalists understand the Great Flood as a physical judgment, and misunderstand Matthew 24 as physical judgment, Covenant Creationists understand Matthew 24 as social, but misunderstand the Creation and Flood as basically social.

If we remove the physical element from the initiation of Covenant history (to open the door to bogus science based on Baalistic philosophy) and from the end of Covenant history, we make the death and resurrection of Christ at its centre unnecessary. If the original curse of death wasn’t physical, and somehow death has already been defeated, actual physical history is stuck in an eternal rut of death.

And a rut is just a grave with the ends kicked out.

Covenant Creationism makes a mockery of the Bible, of the death and resurrection of Christ, and of the very physical hope of mankind. It asserts that there will be no future union of heaven and earth.

_____________________________________
[1] The Noahic firmament did come down, but there is obviously a greater one. This would be because the Creation-to-Noah Covenant was a microcosm of all history, a world within a world. But both these “Veils” are physical. See A Firmament of Flesh.
[2] See The Wolf and the Lamb.

or Ulterior Motifs

Jesus’ reference to sun, moon and stars in Matthew 24 has nothing to do with the physical world, and everything to do with the microcosmic world of the Temple. Because of this, the Covenant Creationists think Genesis 1 is only about the Covenant with Adam, not about physical creation. They’re wrong, just as the literalists are wrong about Matthew 24 predicting the end of the world.

Genesis describes the construction of the world as a Tabernacle. The actual Tabernacle and Temple were microcosms of this (and Christ Himself, as a man, was a microcosm of all of the above [1]). The prophets used de-Creation language such as sun, moon and stars, birds and fish, to describe the end of the microcosmos. Just as Isaiah uses the flood motifs (branch, wolf and lamb, etc.) to describe the end of Israel’s kingdom under a flood of Babylonian troops. Identifying the motifs doesn’t make the source non-historical. Covenant Creationism is false. And having an historical source doesn’t mean the motifs are literal. Dispensationalism is false.

Anyhow, I’ve previously analysed Days 1, 2, and 3. Here’s Day 4. The sun, moon and five visible planets (to the naked eye) are the seven lights on the heavenly Lampstand that watches over Israel (Table) who is/are the firstfruits of the Land (Bronze Altar).

Creation – Ark/Throne
Then God said,
…..“Let there be
……….lights
…..in the firmament
of the heavens

…..Division – Veil - C I R C U M C I S I O N
…..to divide the day
…..from the night;

……….Ascension – Table
……….and let them be (Hailing)
……………for signs (Hierarchy)
………………..and seasons, (Harvest)
……………and for days (Homecomings)
……….and years; (Heritage)

……………Testing – Lampstand watchman over Table
……………and let them be for lights
………………..in the firmament of the heavens
…………………….to give light on the [Land]”;
…………………………and it was so. (Ethics fulfilled in Lights)

……….Maturity – Incense/Ruling Body
……….Then God made (Transcendence)
……………two great lights: (Hierarchy)
………………..the greater light (Covenant Head)
…………………….to rule the day, (Ethics)
………………..and the lesser light (Covenant Body)
……………to rule the night; (Sanctions)
……….the stars also. (Continuity [children])

…..Conquest – Laver – B A P T I S M [2]
…..God set them (as rulers)
……….in the firmament (on the crystal sea)
……………of the heavens (as firstfruits)
………………..to give light (with wisdom)
……………on the [Land], (over the thousands)
……….and to rule over the day (Head)
……….and over the night, (Body)
…..and to divide the light from the darkness. (as Judges, shekinah-eyes!)

Glorification
And God (Transcendence)
…..saw that [it was] (Hierarchy)
……….good. (Ethics)
…..So the evening and the morning (Sanctions)
were the fourth day. (Continuity)

In AD67-70, the angelic “animalia” angels retired. Animal sacrifices ceased. The heavenly court received justified flesh as a new government. As Daniel predicted, the wise shined like stars at the end of the age. [3]

_____________________________________
[1] See A New Heavens and a New Earth.
[2] Just like I keep saying. Look at the subject matter here! Those that have been cut at division are now the ones qualified to bear the sword. Not a bubba in sight. He who began the work was faithful to complete it. The literal word was (ful)filled in flesh (matter/motif). The New Covenant sign reflects this. It is for wise judges, not those who cannot judge between good and evil, or even between mother and father. The curds and honey of the Law is for them (Isaiah 7:15-16; 8:4).
[3] See Jesus’ New Broom, Communion of Saints and Better Angels.

Daniel Harrell tries to marry chalk and cheese by positing that Adam and Eve were real people, just not the first real people. They were the first people with whom God entered into a Covenant relationship.[1] The Rev. Harrell is sitting on the fence, an extremely pointy fence.

For many Christians, the biblical characters Adam and Eve can present a significant challenge to accepting evolutionary theory—that is, when they are cast as historical figures who are also the biological progenitors of the human race. …the Rev. Daniel Harrell discusses how there may be some “middle ground” in the way that Christians understand Adam and Eve. Harrell points out that the historicity of Adam and Eve does not necessarily conflict with science.  Rather, the claim that conflicts with science is the idea that Adam and Eve were the first humans, who were the only original biological ancestors of all humans today.

[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]

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]]> http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2010/06/26/biologos-jenga-bible/feed/ 0 http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2010/03/10/spot-the-fake/ http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2010/03/10/spot-the-fake/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:54:32 +0000 http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/?p=4664

or Playing Poison with Genesis 1

You know how it is when you read one of your favourite theologians and they come up with a real clanger? It’s yes, wow, yes, I’m with you, and then the train of thought jumps the tracks—at least as far as you, the reader, are concerned. It’s like me reading a good Presbyterian who without any warning flies off the wall and marries chalk and cheese to prove the Bible teaches infant baptism. Or it’s you reading this blog watching me fly off the wall every now and then (but it’s all completely logical in my mind—believe me! Bully is never wrong!)

Anyhow, J. L. Vaughan, a “Covenant Creationist” on the AV forum pointed out this article by Brian Godawa, who is both a theologian and a screenwriter. I have featured Brian’s articles on the Abrahamic Covenant, Matthew 24 and Daniel 9 on my old The Last Days page. He is logical and easy to understand. And he’s a preterist. But then he jumps the tracks (as far as I’m concerned) and goes and parrots this drivel:

The literary conventions employed in Genesis chapter 1 mark it out, not as a scientific document describing material origins, but as a literary polemic against surrounding ancient Near Eastern pagan religions. This interpretation divests the text from any obligation to communicate “accurate science” to the modern reader. Genesis 1 is a theological-political document that has nothing to do with science as the modern reader understands it. Creation language here and elsewhere in Scripture is not about establishing scientific origins of material substance and structure but about covenantal establishment and worldview. [1]

Where is the textual or historical evidence for Genesis being a polemic against anything? Is it addressed to the Hebrews in the wilderness? Or does it instead show signs that it was recorded generation by generation from the beginning?

I am not a scientist. I am a professional storyteller. My interests lie in understanding the literary genres and cultural contexts of the Bible as it existed within an ancient Near Eastern worldview that included common metaphors, images and concepts. As readers displaced from such an ancient world by time, space, and culture, we will misread the text through our own cultural prejudice if we do not seek to understand it through the eyes of its original writers and readers. Creation stories (cosmogonies) are particularly vulnerable to this kind of interpretive violence.

The literary conventions, the chiastic structures and the Covenant pattern, do not support this false dichotomy whatsoever. The Bible does not separate symbol and history. These factors actually demonstrate that the physical Creation itself is both Word and Covenant.

A literal reading is cultural prejudice? Basically, the readers of Genesis, until modern evolutionary fantasies, believed it recorded the Creation of the universe out of nothing. It’s the moderns who are guilty of the interpretive GBH. Their theories concerning the text’s origin and purpose have no support, either internal or external. Not a shred. They are just a convenient construction.

On the same site, Peter Enns shows where his faith lies when he lists reasons why Genesis can’t be taken literally, ie. he bows obediently to pop-science and pop-history, which are constantly in flux and based on a faulty paradigm manufactured to free science from Moses. [2]

The biblical depiction of human origins, if taken literally, presents Adam as the very first human being ever created. He was not the product of an evolutionary process, but a special creation of God a few thousand years before Jesus—roughly speaking, about 6000 years ago. Every single human being that has ever lived can trace his/her genetic history to that one person. This is a problem because it is at odds with everything else we know about the past from the natural sciences and cultural remains.

A strictly literal reading of the Adam story does not fit with what we know of the past. Some choose to ignore the data altogether. Others marginalize or interpret the data idiosyncratically to salvage some type of literal/historical reading. But, by and large, everyone—even including this latter group—has to do some creative thinking about how to handle the Adam story. A “just read it literally” mentality is not an available option. “What do I do with the Adam story?” is a real and pressing question for most people of faith. [3]

Perhaps these people should be taking a closer look at their faith? At least he’s honest about the text, and his reasons for misreading it. Enns goes on to discuss the problem of Paul’s extremely inconvenient belief in a literal Adam, and concludes, logically, that

The tensions between science and faith, specifically evolution and Christianity, center on the issue of Paul’s Adam. As such, I think this is where our theological energies need to be invested.

Yes, we must find a way to mix chalk and cheese. What he really means is that Paul disagrees with Peter Enns’ pitiable compromise on Genesis, and so we must now employ our capricious and schizophrenic hermeneutic to deconstruct Paul in the same manner. But then, according to Brian, God was just speaking through a man who was thoroughly “enculturated,” surely? Oh, sorry. We can’t apply the same criteria to the New Testament writers, can we.

James Jordan gets it right. He believes these gents have a twofold process to get to what they think Genesis is really about, since they refuse to acknowledge its actual clarity:

1. Filter the Bible through the baalism of modern science, which, very agreeably, dislodges it from history.
2. Filter it again through the “conflict with chaos” baalism of the ancients.

He concludes that this is just the same as 19th century liberalism. Not that we would want to call anyone names.

Godawa summarises his paper with a paragraph that can be boiled down thusly:

1. Genesis 1 follows a pattern that occurs later in Scripture.
2. The later patterns are not ex nihilo Creation, so neither is Genesis 1, ie. God is just moving stuff around that was already old, and giving it new Covenantal meaning by naming it.

This is the same logic one would use to prove that the real Mona Lisa is a forgery because it looks like the paintings in a room full of confiscated fake Mona Lisas. Mind-numbingly brilliant logic, I must say.

There’s also a video of N. T. Wright on the BioLogos website in which he states that Americans are wrong to link the fight over Creationism with social issues. [4] Now that is a real hall-of-fame, win-the-teddy clanger. It’s amazing how very bright people often overlook the obvious. I bet he baptizes babies, too.

____________________________________________________________
[1] Brian Godawa, Biblical Creation and Storytelling: Cosmogony, Combat and Covenant [PDF]  Brian quotes John Sailhamer a lot. See Jordan on Sailhamer beginning here.
[2] See Tas Walker’s review of The Dating Game for how the establishment of the earth’s age really was a game. Spin the wheel.
[3] Peter Enns, Paul’s Adam Part I
[4] See Tas Walker’s Peace with Evolution for some clear thinking on this.

]]> http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2010/03/10/spot-the-fake/feed/ 7 http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2009/04/10/god-sent-a-flood/ http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2009/04/10/god-sent-a-flood/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 08:12:59 +0000 http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/?p=824

A couple of guys have written a book called Beyond Creation Science. As preterists, they understand there was a symbolic ‘flood’ across the Land of Israel under both Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon and Nero/Vespasian’s Rome. Problem is, they read this back into Noah’s flood and try to say that this was only a local flood, which then allows them to compromise with old-earth Creationism.

It was ‘long-age’ geological assumptions that provided a ‘foundation’ for Darwin’s long-age biological fantasy. I would recommend Tas Walker’s site, Biblical Geology, for someone who really knows his stuff.

The position of these fellows causes more problems than it fixes. It makes the Bible’s very detailed chronology a joke, and forces a gap of millions of years into Genesis 1.

Here’s the solution:

Adam’s failure brought physical de-Creation. Cain founded a corrupt civilisation whose evil influence triumphed and was destroyed in a literal flood. Just like Cain, Ham was cursed, and his son Canaan’s influence led to social de-Creation. As God raised new land out of the waters after the flood, God would now perform another Creation miracle. In calling Abram, God was socially dividing the waters of the nations into the Land and the Sea. The era of the patriarchs, ruling fathers, began. God called Abram, and tore the world in two.

The land and sea division was a literal, physical land and sea in early Genesis. The ark of Noah was a literal ’world-in-a-box’, a safehouse and doorway to a new world. But when God called Abram, the ‘Land and Sea’ division was purely social, and the Tabernacle and Temple were a symbolic ‘world-in-a-box.’ These guys have confused these two and unwittingly undermined the authority of Scripture.

[Also, on hyperpreterist ‘Covenant Creationism’, see A Chronic Hysteresis.]

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