When a paedocommunionist tells his fellow paedobaptists that the Bible trumps tradition, he has shot himself in the foot.

Peter Leithart recently published a paper entitled “Paedocommunion, the Church, & the Gospel.” As always, he is worth engaging with. The problem I have with doing so is that his arguments are sound but his fundamental assumptions are not. This means that the house which he builds is constructed with great wisdom but is also, unfortunately, located on the sand of the sea. Not only is the tide coming in, but there is also a Jonahic storm on the horizon.

Baptists and paedobaptists have rational, logical objections to the opposing position. In such protracted debates, the answer is usually a third way. I believe that third way is inherent in the biblical theology of James B. Jordan. However, this third way requires a paradigm shift at a fundamental level, and pulls the rug from underneath his entire ecclesiology and sacramentology. So far, my friends seem unable to think outside of their current paradigm, so instead of actually dealing with my position, discussion gravitates back to the same old obsolete chestnuts. They do not seem to be able to free their minds from obsolete Old Covenant definitions and demarcations even for a moment. This is a pity, because many other people do. The Theopolis crowd themselves have worked out the solution to the age-old debate but strangely it remains incomprehensible to them.

So, although “Bully’s baptism” as a doctrine begins in Genesis 3 and cuts paedosacraments off at the root, I present some responses here to Peter’s paper. As with Jordan’s lectures on the subject, Leithart begins with the assumption of paedobaptism, so this paper is really an intramural debate. The sad truth is that the actual solution to the problem is not apparent to either side because the problem is paedobaptism itself, that erroneous thing that they are unwilling to question. There is an Old Covenant corpse in their Sanctuary and they are arguing over whether they should open the windows or use air freshener to deal with the nauseating smell. I find this extremely frustrating. The answer is quite simple. Get rid of the corpse. But they like the corpse, so this intramural disagreement merely concerns how much of this cadaver should be in the Sanctuary. Instead of refusing to play sacramental Weekend at Bernie’s any more, the Theopolis gents double down and become more consistent, but also more consistently wrong.

My responses are indented.

Why do serious theologians persist with a story that reads like third-rate fan fiction?

This is a response to Andrew Wilson’s recent thinktheology post, “Nephilim, Anakim, and Why We Care.”

As the proponents of paedobaptism and full preterism doggedly continue to demonstrate, even the brightest theologians are susceptible to crazy ideas. Unsurprisingly, both of these erroneous doctrines – along with the “fallen angels” reading of Genesis 6 – are the result of a common flaw, and that flaw is a failure to put a finger on the pulse of the actual story.

Substandard fan fiction suffers from the same deficiency: while it is enthralled by the features of the original narratives, it mistakenly identifies these facets as the heart of the story rather than merely elements through which its genius is expressed. While paedobaptism, full preterism, and the “fallen angel” reading of Genesis 6 all manage to scrape together some semblance of support from the Scriptures, they seem oblivious to how “out-of-character” their stories are as intended explanations (or perhaps more correctly, adoring extensions) of the Bible. Many of the trappings of the sacred texts are present, which gives them a veneer of authenticity, but the internal logic – the unseen principle which governs the originals and makes them so captivating – is missing. As with the authors of substandard fan fiction, the driving force of the biblical narrative has not been comprehended by some of its most committed fans.

Ignorance of Covenant Structure

Wilson writes:

I take it as read that the Nephilim (Gen 6:1-4) were the results of sexual relations between angels and women. Many don’t, and I used not to, but I now find the Jewish and early Christian witness compelling, the alternatives (Sethites and Cainites? Kings and harems?) quite unconvincing, and the best counterargument something of a tangent. (For those who are counting, the best counterargument is that Jesus says in Matthew 22:30 that it is impossible for angels to have sex. The obvious response to which is simply: no, he doesn’t.)

Despite the fact that angels are never mentioned in Genesis 6, Wilson has mistakenly written off the intermarriage of Sethites and Cainites as being the best explanation of the story. This is because not only have modern theologians atomised the Bible, they have failed to comprehend the text as repeated iterations of the same sacred architecture. We do not have the freedom to treat the interpretation of Genesis 6 as a multiple choice question in an exam because all the questions in this exam have the same answer. Let me explain.

The history from Adam to Noah is a “macrocosmic” recapitulation of the testing of Adam. The step in the narrative where Adam and Eve grasp equality with God corresponds to the rise of these “god-like” mighty men in Genesis 6, the ultimate outcome of the “seed of the serpent.” This most likely explains the word nephilim which is derived from the word for fallen. These men were no more the offspring of angels than was Cain, who failed to “rule over sin” and instead established his own rival kingdom. Even more significantly, the step where the Lord covered Adam’s sin in Genesis 3 corresponds to the point where God revoked the Edenic atonement through animal blood and covered the entire world. The sin of Adam was “the one,” that is, the cultus, and the sin of the sons of God was “the many,” that is, the outcome of the same sin in the culture. The “fruit” that was stolen was the daughters of men, and they were not stolen by angels but by those, like Adam, who had access to the Sanctuary.

This raises another point: every biblical Covenant is a tour of duty, with a mission, a prize, and accountability. Adam faced blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. The fivefold pattern of the commission in Genesis 2 establishes the sevenfold shape of the entire Edenic narrative.

Although an angel was involved in the temptation, it was only its “bestial” earthly counterpart which suffered a humiliating curse, since it was part of the world which God had promised to put under Adam’s feet. The angel was actually exalted to a place in the heavenly court, not as an advocate for mankind but as an accuser, an office he held until the ascension of Christ. Thus, the flood was the curse upon those who had broken the “new covenant” established by God in the shedding of sacrificial blood. The angels were not under any Covenant obligation which is why, for angels, who are mere servants and not sons, there is no redemption.

This micro/macro relationship between Eden and the world is the reason why both narratives work through the pattern established in Genesis 1. To help us to understand it, this pattern is later expressed not only in the elements of the Tabernacle, but also in Israel’s annual festal calendar (Leviticus 23):

Noah, whose name means rest, becomes the “Day 7” of the process, the first man to bear the sword on God’s behalf as the legal representative of heaven upon the earth. He entered into God’s rest and brought Sabbath to the entire world. Since Noah qualified, the word “covenant” is mentioned for the first time in the Bible.

This point concerning Covenant structure might seem obscure or perhaps even irrelevant to some but it is in fact the most potent argument against the “sons-of-God-were-angels” theory.¹If you care to study the fundamentals of the Bible’s fractal “Covenant-literary” structure, there are some helpful links here. The purpose of this sevenfold process is spiritual maturity. The Lord calls all men to submit to Him that He might exalt us. Priesthood must precede kingdom, just as it did in the history of Israel, and in the ministry of Christ. This is the core of the entire Bible. If we are humble, we will be lifted up. Adam was promised a kingdom but he would only qualify for government if he first submitted to God. It was the same for Jesus, of course, who now possesses all authority in heaven and on earth. What Adam seized, Jesus was given as a gift.

Following Adam’s sin, this rivalry between priesthood and kingdom became incarnate in Cain and Abel. The result was the division of humanity into a priestly line (the Sethites) and a kingly line (the Cainites). The priestly line continued to shed the blood of sacrifices on behalf of sinful people, but the kingly line rejected the mercy of God and instead shed the blood of human beings in unmitigated vengeance. Thus, the intermarriage between priests and kings led to the end of God’s mercy and long-suffering. The ultimate irony is that God once again gathered animals, as He had in Eden, but He destroyed all those who rejected the ministry of substitutionary atonement via the blood of “priestly” domestic beasts.

This revoking of mercy explains the reference to there being “no more sacrifice for sins” in Hebrews 10:26. Almost all mankind had trampled underfoot the blood of the Covenant established in Eden, just as the Jews rejected the offering of Christ for the sins of the world. That is why this exact Adam-to-Noah pattern can be overlaid upon the history of the Apostolic Church. Jesus, as Abel, was slain, which led to the prophetic warnings of the Apostles, as Noah, and finally a judgment which Jesus warned would not only be as sudden as the flood in the days of Noah, but would also bring an end to the “kingly” sins of the Herods, including intermarriage for political gain:

For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (Matthew 24:37-40)

This rejection by Wilson of the Sethite/Cainite solution is due to an ignorance of the Bible’s consistency, which is governed by its Covenant-literary structure. However, it is also an outcome of a failure to understand the reason for the establishment of the Circumcision and the Law, which founded and set apart an entire nation as a priesthood which was prevented from intermarriage with the other “kingly” nations. This act by God was necessary to avoid another global judgment, and to maintain a faithful shedding of substitutionary blood on behalf of all nations. This gives us the context of the downfall of Solomon through intermarriage with idolaters, the destruction of the Temple, and of Ezra’s blunt condemnation of the Israelites’ marriages with pagans during the exile. This theme of the confusion of priestly and kingly offices through intermarriage runs throughout the Bible, and is an expression of the fundamental core: man’s unwillingness to humble himself before heaven and his theft of the promised dominion over the earth. If this were understood by most theologians, bogus theories like sex with angels would be relegated to the dust bin where they belong.

Fruit of Land and Womb

Wilson continues:

I also take it as read that the Anakim, the sons of Anak whom we meet in the book of Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua, are descended from the Nephilim: “And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (Numbers 13:33). Which is to say that, when Israel first spied out and then conquered the Land, there were very large individuals milling around, who could trace their lineage back to sexual relations between angels and women. Bizarre, admittedly. But biblical.

This claim by the Israelite spies looks like solid evidence only if we ignore the greater Covenant context. Firstly, it must be noted that the spies were executed for their “evil report,” so its veracity must be questioned. It is possible that they were exaggerating in an attempt to deceive their fellows, and simply threw in “of the nephilim” to terrify the Israelites. But does the word refer to an actual tribe whom everyone knew could trace their descent from the antediluvians, or does the Hebrew phrase simply mean “from among the giants”? After all, there were other over-sized warriors in and around the Land of Canaan.

Secondly, the notion that the nephilim as Nephilim, a separate people which somehow managed to survive interbreeding and was able to pass on its genetic attributes through the many centuries following the flood, is not only highly improbable, it also fails to explain how this people evaded inclusion in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, which contains no mention of Anak or Nephilim. Moreover, where were these Nephilim when Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sojourned in the Land? The giant Goliath was a Philistine, and we know that the Philistines shared a common descent with the Egyptians as sons of Mizraim, a son of Ham (Genesis 10:6). It seems far more likely that the stature of these people was due more to the abundance of food now available in Canaan than merely genetic factors, just as the average height of various races throughout recent history has increased as diet has improved.

Thirdly, and related to the second point, are we also to assume that the size of the haul of grapes from the Valley of Eshcol is due to its lineage from antediluvian grapes? The point of these observations concerning size is that the barrenness of the land promised to Abraham had been reversed by God, along with the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. The Adamic curses (from Genesis 3) were placed upon Abraham on behalf of all nations that they might be reversed by faith, the kind of faith in God which Adam had not demonstrated. (For more discussion, see Stones and Fruit: Divination and Procreation.) After four centuries, not only would the numerous oak trees planted by Abraham now be fully grown, but the size of the fruit of the Land and the fruit of the womb in the Land (its people) showed that it was now ripe for the taking. The mighty people of the Land were to be crushed like grapes, and their houses and vineyards seized as an inheritance for the righteous. The strength and the possessions of these kingly usurpers would be possessed by a priestly people as a witness to the power of God. Israel would defeat the Canaanites just as David would later bring about the fall of Goliath, the one who had called down the Covenant curses upon the people of God, and ultimately (but indirectly) King Saul, who was also a giant bearing a spear. The mighty men (gibborim) of the earth (including its nephilim) would fall before the mighty men of heaven, those whose victories resulted not from the strength of their limbs but from their faith in God (Psalm 147:10). The grapes of Eshcol were a promise of the same kind of rest enjoyed by Noah, so it should be no surprise that the “heptateuch” (the narrative from Joshua to Judges) follows the sevenfold pattern above. Interestingly, just as the nephilim appear at the centre of the Adamic/Noahic narrative, so David and Solomon appear at the center of the Old Testament narrative (see Destroy This Temple).

Numbers 13:33 can only be regarded as evidence for angel-human sexual relations if we lose our grip on the metanarrative of the Torah, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy. Like many others, Wilson fails to interpret every text within the context of Covenant and thus misses the point of the story.

The End of all Flesh

The question is: why do we care? Besides being an intriguing sideshow that raises smirking questions on training courses, why does it matter? Let me suggest two reasons, both of them apologetic in nature.

The first is that they provide a biblical basis for biological continuity between antediluvians and postdiluvians. (Or, in English: they demonstrate that some people on earth, besides Noah’s family, survived the flood.) If everyone on earth apart from Noah’s family had died, then there would be nobody left who was descended from (min) the Nephilim—but the Anakim show that this is not the case. Therefore it is likely that, even from the perspective of Israelites in the Bronze Age, the cataclysmic flood did not wipe out every single person on planet earth outside the ark. Rather, it suggests that the scope of phrases like “the whole land” (qol erets) and “all mankind” (qol adam) is limited to the ancient Near East. Which, given that this was the entire world known to the writers at the time, is exactly what we would expect. It also indicates that attempts to demonstrate geologically that the flood covered the Himalayas are, at least, unnecessary.

I admire Wilson’s commitment to exegesis for the purpose of apologetics, but he fails on both counts.

Firstly, anyone who claims that the Great Flood was local has overlooked the fact that Adam was intended to be the legal representative of “all flesh.” Due to his failure, and the subsequent failure of the culture established by his offspring, “all flesh” was condemned to die “in him.” If anyone had survived the flood, then there were human beings who were outside of the jurisdiction of God. This also goes for those who claim (with a breathtaking cognitive dissonance and an even greater deficiency in basic logic) that the events in Genesis 2 are simply a “liturgical” description of Adam being chosen from among other human beings and given a special role or office before God. There were no “Adamites.” We are all Adamites. That is the foundation of Paul’s theology of the atonement. No one was outside the Noahic Covenant and no one is outside the jurisdiction of Christ. The separation of the human race came with the call of Abraham, not Adam. To claim otherwise is to pervert the narrative beyond recognition in a game of “kick the can.” Moreover, what was the “Covenantal” reason for the disinheritance of Adam’s contemporaries? Had they sinned in some way before Adam sinned? The miraculous integrity of the narrative exposes any tinkering for what it is: disingenuous theological posturing resulting from cowardice and unbelief. (For more discussion, see “Jenga Bible” in Michael Bull, Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.)

The real reason behind any toleration of the notion of a local flood is a desire to bow to the paganism which currently masquerades as science, the monkey religion which underpins every corruption in Western culture, and is quickly bringing about its end. As a friend once said, evolutionary theory – the unscientific assertion that chaos, sex and death somehow constitute a creative force – is just “Enuma Elish baptised in post-Enlightenment balloon juice.” Any attempt to harmonise the Bible with an old earth, let alone evolution, is an exercise in futility, and requires basic logic to be sacrificed on the altar of a misplaced faith.

However, what really concerns me here is the failure to understand the Promised Land of Canaan as a microcosm of the “dry land” of Genesis. That is the reason why the same word is used. These “lands” were not equivalent in size any more than the Canaanites constituted all the people of the globe. Canaan was to be a sacrificial substitute for the actual “dry land,” serving as its legal representative before God (see Cosmic Language), and this representation was an act of mercy for the peoples of the world. The story of Abraham’s qualification is a local recapitulation of the global narrative from Adam to Noah (see Microcosmic Abram). To claim that these were both local not only misses the point of the ministry of Israel as a nation among nations, but also demonstrates an utter ignorance of the layered construction of Covenant history: the Abrahamic Covenant was not established in place of the Noahic Covenant but within it (see The Myth of Covenant Membership). The “floods” of troops which invaded Israel under the judgment of God were the reason floods of waters could be averted. Indeed, the original “flooding” of Canaan was the armies of Israel come to claim the Land promised to their fathers, and importantly, to execute God’s judgment upon its inhabitants. This brings us to Wilson’s second failure.

Genesis Matters

If we allow an extraneous theory such as angel-human sexual relations to skew our take on the narrative, we find that scales eventually grow over our eyes and we are unable to interpret the text faithfully. This is evident in Wilson’s (and Michael Heiser’s) erroneous explanation of the kherem warfare in the book of Joshua.

The second is that they provide vital context for the kherem warfare that took place in Canaan under Joshua. This is a point I had never seen until I read Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm recently, and in particular his description of the “Deuteronomy 32 worldview,” in which Yahweh has disinherited the nations and assigned them to the rule of lesser gods (Deut 32:8 etc). Heiser explains:

Israel is Yahweh’s elect portion of humanity, and the land of Canaan is the geography that Yahweh, as owner, specifically allotted to his people. In the view of the biblical writers, Israel is at war with enemies spawned by rival divine beings. The Nephilim bloodlines were not like the peoples of the disinherited nations … the target of kherem was the Anakim.

Heiser offers a number of clues that he is right about this. (1) The emphasis on giantism in the initial spying mission (for all that this has since been domesticated in contemporary preaching, the point is not just that the people are large, but that they are descended from rival deities). (2) The explicit statement that the Israelite spies had seen the Nephilim in the Land (Numbers 13:33). The giant-like descriptions of enemies of God who live in the land, from Og (Deuteronomy 3:11) to Goliath (1 Samuel 17) and beyond (2 Samuel 21; 1 Chronicles 20). (4) The way in which the summary of Joshua’s kherem conquests (Joshua 11:21-23) focuses on the obliteration of the Anakim: “And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel.” (5) The fact that the very next verse points forward to the ongoing presence of giants in the land of the Philistines, who of course will be the key enemy for Samson, Samuel, Saul and David for the next couple of centuries: “Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some [Anakim] remain. So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses” (Josh 11:22b-23). If Heiser is right here, then the motive for kherem warfare in Joshua was not merely the cleansing of God’s dwelling place, as we know, but the removal of the giant-like offspring of specific divinities.

So why should we care about the Nephilim and the Anakim? Partly because they help us think through the question of the global/local flood, and partly because they provide crucial context for our understanding of kherem warfare, which is one of the most pressing biblical challenges of our generation. And, of course, we should care about things that are in the Bible. There’s always that.

Wilson’s/Heiser’s misinterpretation of Genesis 6 (or failure to interpret it within the context of the biblical Covenants) renders them utterly clueless concerning the reason for the conquest of Canaan. And when I say clueless, I am not being cruel. They really have no idea what is going on. Instead of taking note of what is actually mentioned in the texts leading up to the kherem warfare, they seem totally oblivious to it, focussing instead on evidence for their bogus doctrine of some fictitious angelic bloodline within humanity. Not only does this lead to them offering a stupid “angel sex” explanation for “one of the most pressing biblical challenges of our generation,” they miss a golden opportunity to truly demonstrate the brilliance and integrity of the book of Genesis, and indeed the entire Bible.

The first and most heinous problem is the switch from the moral accountability of the people in the Promised Land to something which is merely racial or genetic. Modern skeptics love to level the charge of genocide against the nation of Israel (and the one true God) but that can only be done if all the previous texts are ignored. Asserting that the necessary context is found in their errant reading of Genesis 6 does nothing to help matters. The warfare is still genocide, but now the targets are giants. They are not destroyed because they have sinned, what they have done, but because of who they are. Besides the incredible theory concerning their origin, this does nothing at all for Christian apologetics.

When Abraham sojourned in the Land, he did not “call upon” the name of the Lord. He “proclaimed” it. He was an evangelist. The people of Canaan were accountable to God, just as later Gentile nations surrounding Israel became accountable once they heard the way of salvation. The books of the prophets all begin with judgment at the house of God (Garden), work their way out into the disobedient tribes of Israel (Land), then out again into the local Gentiles (World). This pattern originated in the history of Adam-to-Noah. As with that history, the process is chiastic, working back into the Land and then into worship established in a new Garden (Noah’s vineyard). The New Testament, as a Covenant lawsuit against first century Israel does exactly the same thing, which is why the letters to the Gentile Churches are placed before the final warnings to Christian Jews, followed by the book of Revelation which begins with a glorified “son of Adam” surrounded by fiery trees and ends with a barrage of Joshua imagery. Jerusalem would be circumcised – “cut around” with a Roman trench – just as Jericho was marched around by a newly circumcised Israelite army. Jericho was a devoted (kherem) firstfruits of the Land, and Jerusalem was a devoted firstfruits of the World.

But to understand the giving of Canaan to the children of Abraham as an inheritance, we must look further back than Abraham. Noah had cursed Canaan, the son of Ham, pronouncing that he would serve as a slave to both of his brothers (see Out of His Belly). So when we reach the book of Exodus, the fact that the Hebrews were serving as slaves in Egypt, “the Land of Ham,” is intended to strike us with horror. But once again, we are clueless as to what is going on because modern theology – which does not take Genesis seriously – has carved the living Word up as if it were a corpse requiring an autopsy. The descendants of Shem not only destroyed the Land of Ham, they also inherited the Land of Canaan. The context is Noahic, and the conflict in Egypt and the conquest of Canaan are both examples of the rivalry between priesthood and kingdom, and the constant attempts to cut off – not corrupt or hijack – the seed of the Woman. This not only renders the angelic bloodline theory redundant, but it also serves as a witness to those who doubt the integrity of the Bible.

Satan is currently bound from gathering the nations in kingly rebellion so that Jesus might gather them in priestly unity.

Everything which Scripture records for us, no matter how mundane or mysterious, exists as part of a process of growth to maturity. This transformation is achieved through relationships established by a Father who delights in His Son and rewards His faithfulness as “seed” with abundant fruit.

History is thus written in “harvest cycles,” and each of these ends with blessings and curses. As in Eden, after a period of silence which allows the righteous and the wicked to fulfill their potential, the Lord comes suddenly (Revelation 22:10-11). As in Eden, He inspects and collects the fruit and gives His trees a pruning. In history, each cycle lasts approximately 400 to 500 years, since that is the time it takes for a new Word to finish its work in a culture. From our beginning in Adam, these cycles also appear to come in pairs, a Forming and a Filling, resulting in “themed” millennia.

Continue reading at Theopolis Institute.

The feet of the great statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream cannot be interpreted as a prediction of the states of modern Europe, but the lessons from their failure can certainly be applied.

The statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream spoke of God’s ordaining of four empires which would rule in succession throughout Israel’s “latter days,” the half millennium from the exile to the Messiah. Like the Tabernacle, the metals of its construction progressed from the finest to the strongest, from the gold of the Sanctuary (Exodus 25:17-21; Psalm 19:10) to the iron of the unconverted nations (1 Samuel 13:19; 1 Chronicles 22:3).¹For more discussion, see James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 174-175.

The image was also humaniform like the Tabernacle, but being kingly rather than priestly it was not cruciform. The anatomical progression follows the threefold process of the foundation of mankind in Eden, where Adam was to image God physically (Genesis 1: being), socially (Genesis 2: knowing) and ethically (Genesis 3: doing). The Lord breathed into Adam’s nostrils (above) and cut into his flesh (beside). It was up to Adam to place his foot upon the neck of the serpent (below). As an effigy of glorified man, the description of this image also works from head to foot, from confession to dominion, from word (divine command) via sacrament (priestly obedience) to government (kingly authority).

Continue reading at Theopolis Institute.

When presented with the pattern of the biblical covenant, many Christians’ eyes glaze over. “Away with this joker and his apophenia!” But there is simply no other way to get a big handle on the Bible. What is the solution? To put living meat on those structural ribs, that is, to communicate how this pattern shapes every aspect of human life.

The covenant pattern is not a “5 steps” or “7 steps” method of self-help. It is a mission during which we must believe God and obey His Word, and receive the blessings He desires to bestow upon us once we are proven to be faithful. It is not only the shape of every human life but also the shape of all of covenant history. It is an incredibly practical thing to learn.

Many theologians regard the pattern as something imposed upon the text (which makes me wonder if they have any literary sensibility whatsoever) but the best theologians do understand the biblical process through intuition borne of familiarity and they arrange things accordingly. Joshua Luper writes:

In his new book, Fool’s Talk, Os Guinness says that “our age is quite simply the greatest opportunity for Christian witness since the time of Jesus and the apostles, and our response should be to seize the opportunity with bold and imaginative enterprise.”

It would be easy for Christians to adopt a posture of disengagement in view of contemporary challenges to communication. Concerns about the corrosive social and intellectual effects of mass media, social networks, technopoly, etc. are well warranted (and Guinness advances such criticisms in his book). Yet the unprecedented opportunity to proclaim the truth in the modern age should not be ignored or squandered. So how should we then witness?

Guinness says our advocacy of Christianity should be shaped by five central truths, which he identifies as creation, fall, incarnation, cross, and Holy Spirit.

“True to the biblical understanding of creation, Christian persuasion must always take account of the human capacity for reason and the primacy of the human heart.

True to the understanding of the fall, Christian persuasion must always take account of the anatomy of an unbelieving mind in its denial of God.

True to the incarnation, Christian persuasion always has to be primarily person-to-person and face-to-face, and not argument to argument, formula to formula, media to media or methodology to methodology.

True to the cross of Jesus, Christian persuasion has to be cross-shaped in its manner just as it is cross-centered in its message…

And true to the Holy Spirit, Christian persuasion must always know and show that the decisive power is not ours but God’s. For God is his own lead counsel, his own best apologist, and the one who challenges the world to ‘set out your case.’ And as Jesus tells us, his Spirit, the Spirit of truth, is the one who does the essential work of convincing and convicting.”

This is a refreshing and thorough set of emphases, which bypasses many potential pitfalls. Its advantage is that it follows the movement of the biblical narrative (creation, fall, redemption), instead of isolating one aspect (e.g. the fall) and treating it as wholly determinative. The approach offered by Guinness allows the entire biblical story to inform and shape our anthropology and apologetics.

I trust that you can see the covenant pattern in Guiness’ “central truths,” which illustrate, though imperfectly, the history recorded for us in the Bible. He begins with what a human being actually is, an image of God (Transcendence). He moves then to the failure of Adam (Hierarchy), the fulfilment of the Law by Christ (Ethics), the fact that the believer is blessed rather than cursed through the work of Christ (Oath/Sanctions), and, finally, the wise testimony of the saints as representatives of God (Succession).

When compared with actual Covenant history, this is really only the first half, ending at Pentecost, which completed the hope of Israel, a human household filled with the Spirit just as Yahweh had dwelt in the Tabernacle and the Temple. Guinness has conflated a few “matrix” layers, shifting from the shape of history to its microcosm in Christ, but his ordering of events remains sound for the purpose of witness, and it does follow to some degree the first half of the Tabernacle order: Ark, Veil, Altar, Table, Lampstand. The Pentecost-to-holocaust generation was, after all, the end of Israel according to the flesh.

Now if we could just get the modern hermeneutical establishment familiar enough with the way the Bible is constructed, and why, we might not only enjoy more effective witness but also more refreshing and thorough Bible teaching.

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.

“By the imperative, time is formed into a cup, still empty but formed for the special purpose of being filled with the content demanded by the order.”

The Imperative Comes First

Essay by John Barach

As many people have pointed out, in Christian ethics, the indicative precedes the imperative. First God says, “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” and then he gives the Ten Words (“You shall have no other gods before me…”). First Paul tells us what Christ has done and who we are in Christ, and then he summons us to act accordingly. First comes the good news of what God has done for us and then comes the summons to respond in faith and love and new obedience.

But when we look at the very beginning of Scripture, what we discover is that the imperative came first.  God creates the heavens and the earth, and then the first word God speaks is a command: “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3).  Now, that’s not the first word in the Bible — first comes the narration, the story of God creating the heavens and the earth, and the description of the earth at the time of creation — but it is the first word recorded that God spoke with regard to that creation. He creates the world. It’s dark, unstructured, and unpopulated, and the Spirit is hovering over the deep. The narrative reminds us that there’s always an indicative implicit in and before the imperative, so that the imperative assumes and develops a personal relationship between commander and commanded, so that the imperative is never mere imperative but rather is a vocation.  Nevertheless, in terms of God’s speech in history, the imperative comes first, and surely that’s significant.

With regard to man, something similar is the case.  In Genesis 2, which develops and expands the account of Day Six in Genesis 1, we learn that when Yahweh God placed Adam in the Garden, he spoke to him: “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Here, the first thing Yahweh God says is indicative (“Of every tree of the garden you may eat”), but it’s an indicative indicating permission (as opposed to a mere statement) and is tied to the next clause in the sentence, which is an imperative disguised as an indicative: “you will not eat” is indicative in form but imperative in force, meaning “don’t eat.”  So the permission given in the first clause also shares something of that imperatival character. Again, there is a lot of implicit indicative here, including the personal relationship of Adam to Yahweh God who is his creator and the commander.  But the first thing Yahweh God says to Adam has the force of a permission and a command with regard to the trees, something imperatival in force.

Returning to Genesis 1, we find that God’s work with creation takes the form of a series of imperatives, moving through the days of creation up to the sixth day, when man is created, male and female. While the events in Genesis 2 take place first, before the creation of the woman, in Genesis 1 the first word of God to the pair, to man as the image of God, male and female, again takes the form of an imperative.  God’s first word to Man (male and female) is not a description of creation, not a presentation of all of God’s goodness, not a report about how God made man in his image, not a promise of what God would do for Adam and Woman.  Instead, it’s a command. Sure, it’s a blessing, but it’s a blessing in the imperative: “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen 1:28).  Only after that does he go on, in the indicative, to say that he has given man the green plants and the trees for food (1:29). The first thing Adam and Woman heard from God was an imperative, and surely that’s significant.

In fact, we can go back before the creation of man to the first word God spoke, and again it is an imperative: “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3).  That’s not the first word in the Bible — first comes the narration, the story of God creating the heavens and the earth, and the description of the earth at the time of creation — but it is the first word recorded that God spoke with regard to that creation. He creates the world. It’s dark, unstructured, and unpopulated, and the Spirit is hovering over the deep.  But then comes the imperative and things begin to change (“And there was light”). Again, the imperative comes first, and surely that’s significant.

What does an imperative do?  Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s observations are helpful here:

The imperative not only commands the listener; it at the same time lights up an alley of time into the future. A trail into time is beaten by the logic of any order given. A high tension current places the moments following the order under the expectation: will this command be followed up and fulfilled? The term “fulfillment” used in this connection is significant. By the imperative, time is formed into a cup, still empty but formed for the special purpose of being filled with the content demanded by the order. The action following the order is not a blind accident of the moment. By having been ordered, it has become organized into one “time span” which stretches from the moment in which the order was given to the moment in which the report is echoed back: “order fulfilled.” Orders connect two separated human beings into one time span, of which the imperative forms the expectation, the report the fulfillment (The Origin of Speech, 46-47).

When God speaks to man for the first time and uses the imperative instead of the indicative, he is creating what Rosenstock-Huessy calls a “time cup.”  There is now a dramatic tension in the story: Will Adam and Woman obey God? Will they be fruitful and multiply? Will they have dominion over the animals? What will they do in response to God and to his commanding word? His order now orders their lives, revealing to them their calling, their responsibility, their relation to God and to the world– revealing how they are to use and order time.

The imperative creates the story that follows: by creating the expectation and setting the standards for judgment, it makes the story that follows what it is.  Without the imperative, it would just be a story of God creating man and then man doing, well, whatever he felt like. There would be no tension, no expectation, no hope, no sense of satisfaction at a job completed, no disappointment in failure and rebellion, and no corresponding joy at redemption and restoration — by which I mean: restoration to the original task and calling, the calling of maturation, fruitfulness, multiplication, and dominion.

But there was an imperative, an expectation, an impetus forward, creating the story.  It’s a story in which, in an important sense, the indicative does precede the imperative: God takes the initiative (as he does even in the Creation narrative) and man responds; God acts on our behalf so that we then can and do respond to him in trust and obedience.  In all imperatives, there’s at least an implicit indicative that underlies it, as I’ve said above.  But what makes it a story is that it’s a time cup, an imperative-created expectation awaiting fulfillment. We still look forward to man’s fulfilling of the mandate given in Genesis 1 (and so does God), with the joyful certainty because of Christ (here’s the all-important indicative!) that it will be fulfilled. In fact, even the imperative that was God’s first word in his creation (“Let there be light”) has not yet been fulfilled to the fullest extent, and all of history — and all of our lives — are meant to be aspects of that fulfillment until the earth is full of God’s glorious light.

History — the history of the world, and our history — is a time cup, formed by God’s imperatives.

“In the days when our courts are declaring that good is evil and evil is good, the recovery of baptism as a delegation of divine legal authority rather than a sign of ‘limited Covenantal obligation’ is crucial.”

Every biblical Covenant is a word from heaven designed to bring a response from the earth. When the laws in the Ark of the testimony were given to Israel, the response of a legal oath was required, intended to culminate in the legal witness of Israel to the nations. Thus, every biblical Covenant is also a process which leads to maturity, beginning with cultivation and ending in representation.

A child must be schooled before he can be employed. A man must be a disciple before he can be an apostle. Adam was to be qualified before he could represent God as a just and merciful judge on earth. But the difference between cultivation and representation is the difference between circumcision and baptism, and this facet of the biblical Covenants is something paedobaptists are unable to accept, at least in its full glory.

Leaving Home

My friend Peter Leithart, once again, has written a brilliant article concerning this process of maturity.

Can we protect our kids from the world and prepare them for it?

Parents can draw guidance from an unexpected source: Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where Paul describes Israel’s history as a centuries-long process of child-training (Galatians 3–4). When Yahweh first brought his son from Egypt, he gave clear, detailed commandments and exercised strict discipline. Israel was, Paul says, “no better than slaves.” But this was always intended to be a temporary arrangement. The law was a tutor, but when faith comes, then “we are no longer under a tutor.” Israel was under guardians and stewards, but then God sends Jesus and the Spirit so that “we might receive the adoption as sons.” Overall, it’s a progression from childhood slavery to mature adulthood.

We can see this progression within the Old Testament. Early on, Yahweh created a comprehensive world that was at once a protection and a pedagogy. He gave his creatures stories, songs, structures, and rules—many rules. By the time of the kings, Israel had grown up. Instead of being withdrawn from the nations, Israel began to make good on the Abrahamic promise to be a light to the nations. Kings and queens streamed to Jerusalem to hear Solomon’s wisdom. Exile was both a judgment and a commission: By the time Nebuchadnezzar deported the Jews, they had become true children of Abraham, capable of leaving home for a land they didn’t yet know.

All this adds up to a rough but useful pattern for child-rearing. On the one hand, parents should have no problem treating their children as “slaves” during their youngest years. “No” is not a swear word; eight of the Ten Commandments begin with “No” (in Hebrew), and one of the two positive commands is “Honor your father and mother.” We don’t send toddlers into combat, and we shouldn’t send them into the warzone of the world. Should we sequester young children in an artificial cocoon of peace, love, and virtue? Absolutely.

On the other hand, the goal is to prepare them to leave, and to keep their heads as they pass through the big world outside. Like the God of Israel, we prepare them by gradual manumission. Some years ago, I read in a now-forgotten book that a parent moves from commander to coach to counselor. We give orders to little kids and require obedience. We coach them through the challenges of young adulthood, giving them room to make decisions, fail, and try again. By the time they’re ready to leave home, the commands should be second nature, and we offer advice to help them over the rough patches.

As Christians tell it, at the end of Israel’s story, the Lord doesn’t command Israel to “return.” Instead, Jesus, the God of Israel made flesh, sends the new Israel of the disciples away: Get out of the house. Fill the corners. The Hebrews started as priests, serving in Yahweh’s house, living under command. They grew to be kings, conquering and ruling a land in wisdom. They were sent out on a prophetic, then an apostolic mission, no longer slaves but sons, heirs of God. It’s the perfect pedagogy of the perfect Father, and we do well to imitate it.¹Peter J. Leithart, Rearing Slaves, Rearing Sons, www.firstthings.com

Leithart describes perfectly the purpose of cultivation as preparation for representation, of training our children that they might leave home to change the world. Yet once again he fails to make any connection between this process and the difference between circumcision and baptism.²See Exposed to the Elements. Circumcision was about cultivation (“Hear O Israel” — word as seed). Baptism is about representation (“Go and tell” – profession/witness as fruit).

Judicial Maturity

For the Covenantalist / sacramentalist, the New Covenant sign means pretty much the same thing as the Old one did: cultivation. The sign is somehow believed to contain maturity in “seed form,” and Leithart has to read Galatians backwards to cram the judicial maturity of New Covenant baptism into something that can be applied to infants. See Reading Galatians Backwards. However, if Israel was in training until Christ, and only then was baptism as we now know it instituted, how can baptism ever be a sign of earthly pedagogy? Surely a personal confession by our children (and a desire on their part for baptism) is the time to celebrate a parenting job well done?

Adam heard the law but did not “image” God legally. He listened but failed to “Go tell” when the Word was challenged by the first false teacher. Unlike Adam, Noah heeded the word and became the first true prophet. Each was under the sword (cultivation) but only Noah took it up (representation as a judge).

We see the same contrast in Israel in Egypt (under the sword) and Israel at Jericho (wielding the sword). In the big picture, this is the difference between the Old Covenant and the New. This might be why the Covenant has moved from circumcision/Land to baptism/Table. We are following the life of the harvest from its natural origin on earth to its supernatural destiny as a communion between heaven and earth. The process begins at the root, works its way to fruit, and finishes at the table of God. The food on the table is the “qualified and glorified” representative of the cultivated land.

Culmination and Initiation

Now, the paedobaptist might object by saying that life is a continuous process of cultivation, and indeed it is. But these levels are not the same. An infant’s gown is not the same thing as a graduation gown or a wedding gown. There is “cultivation” in the womb, there is the “cultivation” of childhood, there is the “cultivation” of study, and of courting, and there is “cultivation” as a minister of God. Infant baptism is thus the breaking of the waters in the womb and cutting of the umbilical chord. This is the only way “paedo” can ever be linked with “baptism.” Physical birth ends cultivation in the womb and begins physical representation of the parents by the child.

Breaking the waters signals the end of something old and the beginning of something new. So baptism is a new beginning, and is thus both culmination and initiation. But what does baptism bring to an end and what does it allow to begin? Where does baptism fit among all these varied stages? Well, what does a biblical baptism picture? Death and resurrection. Baptism is linked inextricably to a ministry as a living sacrifice, a martyr for whom death is gain, given the power to bless and curse as a spokesman for God.

Unlike circumcision, baptism does not speak of being a child of men but a son of God, that is, a legal representative, a prophet. It ends the period focussed on submission to heaven and begins the subsequent dominion of earth. Noah’s Great Flood “baptism” ended the old world and began the new one, but the new order was one of greater maturity and more authority in office. Noah blesses and curses with the full authority of God, a chosen ambassador. Baptism ends “legal” childhood under the stoicheia and begins a ministry of legal representation of God.

Baptism is about office, not flesh. It is supernature, not nature. Jesus spoke of a new birth, but He was not talking about more sons from Sarah’s or Rachel’s wombs. He spoke of the firstborn from the dead, and the legal witness which would follow. Paedobaptism confuses the Covenant “Oath” (Adam’s faithfulness) with the Covenant “Sanctions” (the resulting gifts from God), the same error made by the Jews and Judaizers in the first century. It is a subtle seizing of the Tree of Kingdom without prior submission to God.

Conflated Births

Each era of cultivation speaks to the others, but conflating them is an enormous mistake when it comes to the meaning of baptism as legal representation. Baptism accompanied the sign of tongues and the explosion of prophetic ministry across the world. To claim it is about cultivation rather than representation is a backward step. This puts the criticism of the Christian Jews in Hebrews 5 into context. They were still “hearing” like Israel, but stuck on the Old Covenant basics.

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:11-14)

Hebrews refers to the physical cultivation of childhood to describe spiritual cultivation. The saints should have been on the wine (strong food), and past the “milk” of the Covenant basics. Despite being raised as Jews, they were still getting a grip on the basics (cultivation) when they should by now have become teachers (representation). The author is not saying that these people were actual babies. Since they conflate the first birth with the second, paedocommunionists give wine to actual babies, which exposes their paradigm as a profound misunderstanding of some very basic things. The Church is the “nursery” of culture, but the Federal Vision unwittingly turns the church into an actual nursery. The earthly image is mistaken for the glorious reality, rather than merely a stage in the process.

This answers Dr Leithart’s strange case against us baptists who “talk to our babies.” He misguidedly conflates two very different stages of human life. Advocates of paedofaith quote Psalm 22:9-10 without thinking too deeply about it. David himself poetically conflates the care of his heavenly Father with the care of his earthly parents, but only poetically:

…you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God…

One certainly images the other, but these levels of cultivation are not the same. David’s parents were representatives of God in David’s boyhood cultivation. The ministry was from the hand of God but it came via mediators. In the New Covenant, we are no longer under an order administered by angels. We are now the angels, the messengers. That is the point of baptism. To claim that these very different periods of cultivation are the same thing is to claim that a child of men is, without ethical qualification, a son of God. But as in Hebrews, these are not the same thing. Although there is continuity between the child and the adult, a child is not an adult, and the flesh is not the Spirit.

The sacralizing of the first birth rather than the second unwittingly feminises the New Covenant. The New Covenant is about God’s sons, not ours, which is what Jesus’ baptism was all about, and why He had no physical children. The Church is not a nursery for the training of infants but a barracks for the training of soldiers. The Federal Vision’s hybridised New Covenant, with its “two tier” baptism, is just Abrahamic foozball in the clubhouse. Nurturing our children in the Lord is certainly a grave responsibility, but the real game is with Jesus out there on the field. Abraham’s inheritance was his own children. Jesus’ inheritance is the nations of the world.

Jesus’ Baptism

Based on Jesus’ baptism, the rite is a ceremony of graduation from the authority of Joseph the carpenter to the Craftsman of all Creation. Each stage prefigures the next, but the stages are not the same, just as the first birth is not the second birth, and just as the regeneration of one individual is not the regeneration of the world. The image is not the reality, yet although it is a part of it, conflating them is a form of idolatry, an over-realised eschatology. This explains the “sorcery” of Israel, whose leaders thought their earthly lineage made them acceptable to God. The Pharisees were indeed sons of Abraham (image) but not sons of God (reality). They were Jews but not what Judaism imaged or pointed to, thus not true Jews. “Dominion” was thus seen to be the result of breeding rather than legal witness.

The “baptism of the Spirit” was what officially ended the time of cultivation of the disciples and officially began their apostolic witness as representatives of Christ.

Jesus’ baptism signified the end of His personal cultivation on earth and the beginning of His representation of heaven. However, Jesus had four of these events, and even these must not be conflated, since they are stages of growth in stature and maturity: Circumcision (earthly father), Baptism (heavenly Father), death and burial (Table), ascension and return (enthronement). This process works from earth to heaven, from the Bronze Altar, through the Laver, into the Holy Place and ends on the kapporet. We see this exact sequence in the architecture of Exodus 24, which was the culmination of Israel’s physical cultivation as a nation, culminating in only the legal representatives dining with Yahweh on the mountain.

Likewise, in the life of Jesus, each of these events ended a period of cultivation and began a greater level of representation. The “baptism of the Spirit” was what officially ended the time of cultivation of the disciples and officially began their apostolic witness as representatives of Christ. This might be why the martyrdom of the saints in Revelation 14 is presented as a “fractal expansion” of the death of Jesus: the white harvest of the oikoumene (cultivation) was cut down and gathered for the table of God (representation).

Israel’s Baptism

Paedobaptists mistakenly think that Israel’s corporate baptism supports their errant rite, but even the nation of Israel was baptised for the sake of legal representation. Israel was not baptised into Abraham but Moses. Why? Circumcision was about cultivation (Abraham to Joseph) but Israel’s baptism was about representation (Moses to Joshua), her mediation for the nations.³See Destroy This Temple And within Israel, it was only the Levitical priests and the sacrifices — those who represented Israel before God — which were washed as mediators. The priesthood of all believers, the sign of which is believer’s baptism, came only at the end of Israel’s history. Israel’s annual feasts were also a process of cultivation (preparation for ministry) and then representation (witness) to the nations at Booths. Like the end of her annual feasts, this was the completion of her cultivation under the Law of Moses and the beginning of her ultimate ministry to the nations.

As Leithart fails to mention, protecting our children from the influence of the world until they are ready to influence it illustrates for us in microcosm the purpose of circumcision in history. The children of Israel were taken out of the nations that they might be matured, able to judge between good and evil, and then put back among the nations as a corporate image of the justice and mercy of God.

The Old Testament is claimed to offer support for paedosacraments, but even within the history of “Israel according to the flesh” we can see that circumcision and baptism meant very different things.

As we have seen, the institution of circumcision culminated in Israel’s “baptism” through the Red Sea and the “table” on the mountain. But just as the events from Abraham to Joseph were cultivation (Canaan to Egypt as Forming), and the events from Moses to Joshua focussed on legal representation (Egypt to Canaan as Filling), we also see these two elements within this secondary stage in legal terms, that is, legal cultivation and legal representation. The nature of Israel’s baptism as a sign of judicial maturity is the point paedobaptists miss when they note Paul’s allusion to these events. Since they are satisfied that their erroneous practice is vindicated, they fail to think any further about it. This is not only terrible exegesis, it is a failure in “Covenant theology” from its traditional experts.

The process in Israel’s journey from Egypt to Canaan is entirely legal, moving from external law (childhood) to internal law (adulthood), and this is why Paul refers to it in 1 Corinthians 11. The “exodus” of the Church from the Egypt of Herodian worship was fundamentally Ethical in nature. It had nothing whatsoever to do with being set apart genealogically as Israel was. It amazes me that this fundamental difference is consistently ignored.

Between Egypt and Canaan, the judicial maturity of Moses the prophet was to be “measured out” in the hearts of Israel. Israel was given the “Nos” of the Law and possessed Canaan only when the new generation said “Yes.” The process follows not only the Creation Week, but also the pattern of sacrifice. What began as raw flesh and blood was offered voluntarily to God and became a fragrant cloud of smoke, a pleasing testimony. Whereas the narratives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob focus on the reversal of physical barrenness (Sanctions), the wilderness journey is all about “ethical fertility,” that is, richness towards God (Oath).

To claim that Israel’s corporate baptism is any kind of foundation for paedobaptism is to misunderstand the difference between circumcision and baptism. The Old Testament is claimed to offer support for paedosacraments, but even within the history of “Israel according to the flesh” we can see that circumcision and baptism meant very different things.

The Land of Israel

Circumcision was a boundary for farming, fencing off a people and Land for cultivation. The promise of fruit from the Land and fruit from the womb cannot be separated, either in Adam or in Abraham. This is why animals are always treated as part of the Old Covenant household of faith. The animals were the only truly “blameless representatives,” serving as substitutes for Israel as the firstborn of God, both her physical sons (cultivation, Exodus 4:22) and her ethical sons, the Levite priests (representation, Numbers 3:22).⁴See The Case for Covenantal Animal Baptism. If this twofold process seems strange, we must remember that Israel gave a tithe of its harvest to the Levites (cultivation) and the Levites then gave a tithe of that tithe to the Lord (representation). Man’s table is not God’s table. Differentiating between the sons of men and the sons of God under the New Covenant should not be difficult for theologians since it is woven throughout the very fabric of the Old Covenant.

Paedobaptistic ecclesiology is still working on the Abrahamic microcosm, the hobby farm.

Israel was set apart from the nations by circumcision, and cultivated by the Law. When Gentile believers mocked the Jews, Paul reminded them that this cultivation was of great benefit.

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means… (Romans 3:1-3)

The oracles of God were beneficial, just as our preaching to our children is beneficial. Whether or not it produces fruit, the process of ploughing, sowing and watering is a holy one. But when circumcision was ended through the death of Christ, the time of cultivation was over. It was time for the harvest. Paul also reminds those in Rome that both Jew and Gentile were still “under sin.” In Christ, the focus moved from seed to fruit, from cultivation to representation. Circumcision and uncircumcision meant nothing once there was spiritual fruit. When one brought forth spiritual fruit, the field from which one came, cultivated or uncultivated, Jew or Gentile, became irrelevant.

Baptism is not about seed but about fruit. Paedobaptism misguidedly sets a boundary of cultivation (planting the seed), which might explain why infants are “sprinkled.” But biblical baptism is about harvest, and Matthew 28 says there are no longer any fences. God harvests where He will. Paedobaptism tries to make the Church the field to be farmed, when the Church is actually a silo for the harvest, and a barracks for the workers. Paedobaptistic ecclesiology is still working on the Abrahamic microcosm, the hobby farm.

Since the “field” is now the entire world, the “nurture in the Lord” is not merely for our children but for all people everywhere. When one believes, one becomes a representative, a speaker. Since circumcision is gone, there is only the Gospel (cultivation) and witness (representation). There is no sign for cultivation, any more than there was before the time of Abraham. Baptism is only for legal representatives.

Paedobaptism makes the New Covenant as parochial as the old, as this comment from a paedobaptist demonstrates: “When you try to evangelize and disciple people who do not have the Spirit and who have no faith, you have no guarantees or promises or statistical probabilities.” This assumes that the Gospel has no power unless there is some kind of “fence” to contain it. Not only does this make no sense, we have no such guarantee anyway. We are simply told to sow the seed, water, and trust God for the increase.

The four “household” events recorded in the book of Acts were signs of the end of the old order, shifting the Covenant from the sons of a man to the sons of God, from physical forming to spiritual filling, from vessels to treasure, from cultivation to representation. If infants had indeed been baptised, this would make the New Covenant a limited obligation, a limited cultivation, like the Old. So it cannot logically be the case. It must therefore be a sign of representation, the sign of circumcision of flesh fulfilled in the circumcision of the heart of the believer.

Imitating Christ

To make baptism about cultivation under the Gospel rather than authority as an ambassador of the Gospel is to misunderstand the temporary purpose of the nation of Israel as a bootcamp for prophets. One must hear (cultivation - Land) before one can speak (representation - Table). Although Abraham was not baptised, he was qualified at various stages and only then ate before God with Melchizedek. Hebrews 5 says the same thing of Christ Himself, who was qualified before being given His great office.

If we want to celebrate parenting, baptism surely comes at the end of a job well done, at the beginning of ministry. The glory of a newborn is not the same as the glory of a child who chooses wisdom over folly. This glorious New Covenant rite is not one to be dismissed as “individualism.” Israel was baptised into Moses the prophet, but now all the Lord’s people are prophets, legal representatives, wise judges of what is good and what is evil. In the days when our courts are declaring that good is evil and evil is good, the recovery of baptism as a delegation of divine legal authority rather than a sign of “limited Covenantal obligation” is crucial.

At which point were the apostles sent out? In the big picture, it was after the institution of baptism. The Covenant moved from commander to coach to counselor — priesthood, kingdom, prophecy. As Leithart says, “We do well to imitate it.” But he does not. His ecclesiology is stuck in the Abrahamic childhood of the Church, and his sacraments are all about earthly parenting. Israel was baptised into Moses’ “No.” A believer is baptized into an uncoerced “Yes,” the testimony of Jesus Christ, the first sign of spiritual maturity. It is the day when a son or daughter becomes an eternal brother or sister.

After conversion, our “judicial” cultivation certainly continues until our baptismal investiture is fulfilled in resurrection. Only then will we truly represent God, enthroned with Him not only by faith but also by sight.

_______________________________
ART: The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger

“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.

Is our justification a past event or a future one? The debate continues while the answer is, like Adam and Eve, hidden in plain sight.

The problem with most theological discussions concerning our justification is that they are imagined in the courts of men rather than in the court of God. What is the difference between these two courts?

The courts of men are either sanctuaries or courtrooms, priesthood and kingdom divided like the house of the Lord and the house of Solomon. But God’s court is the domain of priest-kings, that is, prophets. The “third tree” is always a Tree of Righteousness, a Man clothed not in fig leaves but in the glory of God, who is a shelter for all those on earth.¹The book of Genesis begins with the nakedness of Adam, and ends with Joseph, a young man who loses his robe a number of times but ends up feeding all the nations through his heavenly wisdom. See also The Third Tree.

The False Prophet

God’s court is where His representatives, “the sons of God,” not only worship Him as His subjects but also report to Him, and even advise Him as elders. This is exactly what Abraham did concerning the destruction of the cities of the plain, and it is very likely that it was during one such courtly appearance that the Lord pointed out to Satan his servant Job, who was a priest-king like Noah, Melchizedek and Jethro.

The first time God held court with Man was after the sin of Adam. Words from God, an abundant promise (kingly rule on earth) and a restraining law (priestly submission to God), had been given to Adam. He, too, could be a priest-king, but this would require a response, a word from Adam. In fact, it would require two words: a denunciation of the works of the devil on earth, and then a confession, an oath, before the God of heaven. This oath would have been something like: “Here is the woman you gave to be with me. The serpent deceived her, but I present her to you now as a chaste virgin.” Following this very first Covenant oath would have come blessings from God, “Well done!” and then the opening of the Land and the Womb in abundant fruitfulness. Instead, of course, Adam justified himself but in entirely the wrong way. He shifted blame, and the Lord gave him a chance to confess—a negative oath, but a true confession nonetheless. In our confession of sin we cross the courtroom to the Lord’s side against ourselves. But Adam failed again, and forced God to shift the blame—onto sacrificial substitutes.

In the court of God, all sins exist in a single body, incorporated in Man’s role as the image, the representative of God. Thus the High Priest represented all Creation before God (being the only Israelite permitted to wear combinations of animal, vegetable and mineral) and the Prophets represented God to the entire Creation (with access to the Garden, the Land and the World), speaking in the secular courts of the nations. Only in the Prophets is there a link between the court of God and the courts of men.²This brings the background of sacred architecture to light in Paul’s condemnation of the saints’ failure to judge between themselves in 1 Corinthians 6:3. It might also explain Jesus’ ministry’s in “Galilee of the nations” (Isaiah 9:1) and in the Temple “Gentile” courts, a faithful Jewish testimony before all nations.

Thus, the animals which the Lord slew to cover Adam’s sin were a taste of the death of all flesh, all the animals whom Adam represented before God, since he shared the same breath. But for now, the heavenly breath, the indwelling Spirit of God, was denied him. He would not be a Prophet. The rest which would have come on Day 7 included rule and representation. But Adam failed to serve the Lord in the day of small things,  so he would not be given anything greater to do. Failing to speak for God, we never hear a word from him in the Bible ever again. His life continued, but his testimony, and his intended Prophetic ministry, was ruined.

Adam’s iniquity, his gross sin, was a failure to balance the scales of justice before the nations (in this case, Eve, the mother of all living) and to advocate for them before God, the exact opposite of what prophets are supposed to do.³The English words iniquity and inequity are both derived from the Latin aequus, meaning equal, the only difference being the scale of the difference.

What is Justification?

To justify something means to show adequate cause. The problem with our sin is that the scales never balance. There is never a cause great enough—even in our own minds—to justify the enormity of our rebellion against God, since all sin is at heart an unwillingness to believe that He is good when His promises are challenged by satans and circumstances. And that brings us to the truth that justification is always a Covenantal act, which means it is part of a process.

This is what we see in the first legal case in history. Justification comes after an ethical response to the Law of God, and it results in the expression of either the Lord’s pleasure or displeasure, as blessing or cursing, a judgment which then affects the future.

In the Covenant pattern found throughout the Bible, this assessment and confession before God, a legal hearing, is found at the fourth step.⁴For an introduction to the Covenant pattern, see Reading the Bible in 3D, and then the more detailed Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.

All adult Israelites took a Covenant Oath at Sinai, and they broke that oath soon after by worshiping a golden calf. Many died at the hands of the Levites, but the entire generation died at the hand of the Lord in the wilderness. It is worth noticing that this process occurred at exactly the same point in the initial cycle of the Abrahamic Covenant, from Canaan to Egypt and back again:

This oath-breaking is the legal scenario behind the many times when the Lord speaks of His people honouring Him with their lips but not their hearts. So this initial cycle of delegation—taking the Oath—leads to another event where the Lord returns to assess whether or not His delegates kept their promises, that He might keep His. Either they would be justified through their obedience, or God would be justified in condemning them. Of course, this is where the mercy of God comes in, and it is no accident that in the sevenfold festal pattern (as presented in Leviticus 23), the Day of Atonement corresponds to the Oath/Sanctions step of the Covenant:

You might notice that this seven-point pattern is a microcosm of the first seven books of the Bible. It is also the pattern of Israel’s entire history from Abraham to AD70.⁶See Bible Matrix: An Introduction to the DNA of the Scriptures for a full rundown.

What is very interesting is that this exact pattern is found in the Ten Commandments—but only if we follow what is known as the Jewish “Scroll Division” favoured by Augustine.⁷See Q&A: Why Ten Words on Two Tablets?

Theft and false witness in this construct are Adam and Eve, or Church and State, in the courtroom of God. A testimony is required of them. Adam attempts to cover his sin, but Eve gives a true testimony. As it was at the condemnation of Christ by the Jewish priesthood, their testimonies did not agree. A false testimony is always somehow a condemnation of God.

As two conflicting testimonies, heaven and earth, Priesthood and Kingdom, like Adam and Eve, were set in conflict forever until the Prophet came, a better Adam. When two or three (as legal witnesses) are gathered in His name (as a legal confession, identifying them with the atoning sacrifice), He is there among them, and there is rest, rule and representation, the Day of the Lord. They are justified in His sight.

It is worth noting that this is also the basic process found in every sacrifice. Although the Levitical sacrifices allowed men to eat with God for the first time, all the previous sacrifices were whole burnt offerings, or Ascensions.⁸See The First Ascension. Every sacrifice was a microcosm not only of the Creation Week, but also of the history of the entire world, thus the entire world could be judged in the final sacrifice of the Son of God.

Now, although there is a priestly washing at Division (the sacrifices were washed), it was not until the smoke ascended from this earthly Laver to the heavenly Sea, the court of God, that Yahweh was pleased. The waters above and those below were united in a good way by a sacrificial mediator between heaven and earth. It was the Circumcision and then the ministry of the Levitical priesthood which prevented another Great Flood.

But what we must notice here is that the offerer was not vindicated (if obedient), or not justified (if disobedient but repentant), until step 6. Even if we are disobedient, God Himself is vindicated in a faithful confession of sin (Psalm 51:4; Romans 3:4).

Take Me to court; let us argue our case together. State your case, so that you may be vindicated. (Isaiah 43:26, Holman)

Now, every baptism in the book of Acts follows this pattern.⁹See for instance New Covenant Virility, but I am sure you can see this pattern easily in each story now that it has been pointed out. All baptism account put baptism at Conquest, or Oath/Sanctions. That is, the profession of the saint on earth vindicates God in heaven. The name of Jesus on the lips is the vindication of the work of God in its circumcision of the heart, making it priestly, that is, submissive towards God. Peter the apostle understood this clearly, even if not every Peter does. Faithful testimony is a fragrance which pleases God.

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. (1 Peter 3:21).

So baptism is tied to the Covenant Oath, and the Sanctions. The Father looks upon the Son and is pleased, just as Yahweh smelled the savour of sacrificial smoke and was pleased. This means that the hybridisation of circumcision and baptism in paedobaptism—in sacrificial terms—is the offering of raw flesh to God. But no flesh can be justified in His sight. It must first be transformed by fire, and ascend as fragrant smoke. The evidence of transformation is the “smoky” testimony, in word and/or deed.

Baptism Justifies You

Peter Leithart was recently hauled over the coals by Tim Bayly¹⁰Peter Leithart: No Baptism, No Justification for linking baptism with justification.¹¹Peter Leithart, No Sacraments, No Protestantism Pastor Bayly cannot allow this, because he, like Doug Wilson, has divorced baptism from actual conversion. However, although Peter Leithart is, I believe, correct that the apostle links baptism and justification, he and all the more consistent Federal Vision guys think sons of men can be made sons of God “objectively” through baptism. These gentlemen will keep fighting among themselves until suddenly one day the penny drops and they identify paedobaptism, their little “household god,” as the cause of all this confusion. I have explained this numerous times to no avail but I look forward to, well, being vindicated.

Since baptism justifies one, what then is justification? Vindication in court. And those who appear in God’s court, which is where Jesus was at His baptism once the heavens opened, are required to give a testimony. Baptism is for representatives of God. It is not for the children born as the fruit of the earth, nor for the angels of heaven, but for the Spirit-filled saints who are hybrids of heaven and earth, as the first Adam was intended to be.

Past or Future

Is our justification a past event or a future one? The debate continues while the answer is, like Adam and Eve, hidden in plain sight.

The problem is, as always, that we are dealing in fractals. One man can die for all because the one represents perfectly the whole. The Justified One is a mediator, uniting the waters, or perhaps keeping them apart. He stands on the crystal sea, the court of God, as a slain lamb, after being washed in the Laver on earth. The ministry of Christ thus moved the High Priesthood from the Jerusalem below to the Jerusalem above.¹²See my commentary on Galatians 4 in The Shape of Galatians: A Covenant-literary Analysis.

So justification is always a two-fold event, Covenantal bookends, just as the Oath and the Sanctions represent the beginning and end of the Covenant process. Circumcision of the flesh of Israel eventually led to a Pentecostal circumcision of heart. The Abrahamic Covenant began with a household of circumcised sons of Abraham and ended with the sign to the Jews of households of “sons of God”—legal witnesses who were both Jews (Church) and Gentiles (State). Thus, these events did not establish a new “household” order at all.¹³See The Household of Faith – 3 The process moved from childhood to adulthood, from a people set apart in Abraham and baptised into Moses as one flesh, to a supernatural Body of Adams and Eves robed in white and acting as mediators. That is what Christians are: legal representatives and advocates between heaven and earth.

So for the believer, justification is a set of bookends, both past (conversion) and future (resurrection). A true baptism, after all, looks just like a resurrection. If yours did not, it was not a baptism.

ONE MAN: Justification of God in the courts of Men

• Delegation (Step 2): Hearing the Gospel – Circumcision of heart (NOT flesh)
• Vindication (Step 6): Initial public testimony and baptism (profession)

ALL MEN: Justification of Men in the court of God

• Delegation (Step 2): Testimony before God to the world, beginning with baptism, the first step of public obedience in the Spirit as a Covenant representative (as Adam was supposed to be)
• Vindication (Step 6): Testimony (as a witness/martyr) before men, and resurrection

Justification is thus both past and future. Those who are truly born again will persevere. The testimony of Jesus (the Gospel “oath” on earth) is its beginning and His testimony in heaven is its end, and the end looks a lot like the very beginning, only with a better Adam as our legal representative, the first Man to be baptised and have the heavens open above Him.

So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 10:33)