Paul, who for some reason has disappeared from my feed reader, reminds me of another problem.
Building bridges, delivering medical supplies to hospitals, installing water heaters, defending clients in court, holding public office, and having friends over for dinner are “creation work,” given a pledge of safe conduct ever since Cain under God’s regime of common grace. In this work, Christians serve beside non-Christians, as both are endowed with natural gifts and learned skills for their common life together.
What pledge of safe conduct? The sign appointed for Cain is replace by the rainbow as a sign of the covenant with Noah which specifically addresses Cain’s crime:
And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.
And is this arrangement based on creation? No, it is based on Christ’s cross:
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
And, in any case, this ends any pledge of safe conduct. How is God going to fulfill his pledge never again to destroy the world? The answer is in Babel and then other stories. God judges the world in smaller judgments rather than allowing another Cain to grow under a pledge of safe conduct to force Him to destroy the whole earth.
And that’s exactly what we see. Sodom and Gomorra are not given a safe conduct. God judges them because their wickedness became so great. He refused to judge the rest of Canaan and give it to Abraham right away because they were not so wicked yet.
(The idea that God used Canaan as a special intrusion to demonstrate Judgment Day is simply made up fiction. God’s judgments broke out over and over again in many places. The only thing unique about conquest of Canaan was that God used a covenant people rather than pagan armies or volcanoes etc. From the Flood to Sinai, the only Land that shows special holiness characteristics is Goshen in Egypt when Israel is there. When Moses approaches he almost dies because of his uncircumcised son. That was not a problem between Moses and God until he came back to Egypt.)
It is precisely God’s ongoing judgments in history that keep the world as a whole from being judged. It is the very opposite of Cain’s “safe passage.”
Excellent post, Mark. There’re few things that get me more riled up than this W2K nonsense. I’m continually amazed by W2K’s blatant disregard of the Great Commission and the apostolic imperative to “take every thought captive” to Christ.
Christian hospitals the same root error as Left Behind video games? Puh-leez!
Your post makes an important biblical observation. The Noahic or Postdiluvian Covenant (PDC) is in fact a redemptive covenant.
Enacted on the basis of an offered sacrifice, the PDC derives its force from the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ and finds its completion in the the New Covenant. If the Great Flood is the historical alpha point, and the Eschaton the omega point, of the present heaven and earth, the water of Calvary’s judgement (or, Christ’s baptism) provides the meaningful content of this history. Therefore, the PDC actually initiates the cycle of historical redemptive covenants that culminate in the world’s redemption and is thus seen as a historical administration of the Covenant of Grace.
The PDC is not a redemptive by-product but rather an essential component of the redemptive program that overlays and perpetuates the creational (cultural) mandate. W2K gets it exactly wrong.
I should also mention there is no biblical paradox between Christ’s resurrection and ascension. Rather, Paul (and John!) presents two phases of Christ’s ministry, his humiliation and exaltation (Phil. 2:5-11, cf. Jn. 12:31-32; 16:28; 17:1) corresponding to the two stages of his high priestly task, oblation and intercession (Heb. 5:1-10).
The attempt to insert a dialectical tension between the resurrection and ascension seems perverse when contrasted with the biblical portrayal of the resurrection-ascension as one single movement of exaltation (cf., Acts 2:24-36; 13:32-35; Heb. 5:7-10).
Besides enumerating W2K’s theological errors, I could go into Horton’s misreading of Church history in general and American Evangelicalism in particular, but suffice it to say, there is no historical connection, much less a necessary logical connection, between Kuyper (Christian transformationalism) and Pelagius. Of course, faulty history flows from faulty theology.
Godspeed,
Andrew Matthews
Sure, Mark, but it’s a good reductio of Horton’s position. He has made a career out of arguing from the excesses of Evangelkcalism to discredit any redemptive cultural enterprise.
Andrew, for the record, I’m the one who mentioned Left Behind. I wanted to explain why I was pulling the comment about hospitals out of its context. There are all sorts of “Christianized” enterprises one might consider silly (though see Garver’s point). I think Horton was confused or confusing by putting them all together.