Creed Code Cult: Living Together in Perfect Harmony.
A couple of warnings first.
- I’m responding to a blog post about a book, not a book, because I haven’t read it.
- And the post is rather brief so I’m actually responding to my impressions of common misunderstandings. The post prompted these thoughts but I’m not sure they accurately explain his thoughts.
But it seems to me that there is a common Evangelical way of understanding Noah and Abraham that won’t bear scrutiny.
First, the Noahic covenant is seen as one that doesn’t involve spiritual issues and, Second, the Abrahamic covenant is seen as establishing a community of the saved out of which everyone else (or almost everyone else) is damned.
Noah
The fact that Noah is treated and described as a new Adam does not mean that he is to be associated with the first creation and “nature” exclusively. Rather he is a type of the final New Adam.
And, having been present when the dove hovered over the waters, and the dry ground was again made, and being given (even more) dominion over the animals and told to be fruitful and multiply, Noah goes on himself to create a garden, and deal with violations by pronouncing judgment.
You see, there is a “spiritual antithesis” in the Noahic Covenant. There are believers and rebels. There is a “spiritual” divide within humanity.
Finally, while the natural order gets preserved in the Noahic Covenant, it gets preserved precisely by God’s more frequent and severe interventions in history. Before the flood, God left Cain alive and allowed his descendants to thrive. This led to the eventual apostasy of the world until only one family was left. But now God has promised not to do this again? How well he keep this promise?
By overlooking apostasy?
No, that would lead to universal damnation.
Cain went East and built a city and was left alone. Nimrod went east and built a city and God scattered it. God allows the world to go on for the evil and the good alike precisely because he refuses to allow evil to multiply beyond a certain point.
Abraham
Abraham wasn’t chosen to damn outsider but to save them. There are believing Gentiles all over the place in Genesis and throughout the Old Testament. The point of Abraham’s election is to be a priestly nation to the other nations.
The one reason why was might see more of a spiritual antithesis in Canaan is precisely because of the spiritual antithesis in the Noahic covenant. Canaan comes from the Fall we see under Noah. But even here it is not universal, Melchizedek being one example.
God’s sovereign choice of Abraham may have analogies to the doctrine of double predestination, but his election to the exclusion of others was not precisely the same thing.
The whole Noah thing overlooks the fact that any common-grace covenant is only set up through redemptive grace, and that at that particular point those communities were in fact the same. The only community around was the redeemed one. Thus, the redepemtive is logically prior to the common one. Furthermore, part of Jesus’ work is to complete the cultural mandate (Heb. 2:5-9). And it was the people of Israel in Egypt who actually fulfilled the multiplying commandment…Anyhow, as usual, mostly a charicature of transformationalism (by the post, not you).
The lack of knowledge about the historical “noahide order” is amazing among modern Reformed folks. This was a commonplace of medieval and Reformation thought, and it has been treated extensively by the 2nd Temple scholarship as well.
The Noahide order extended alongside the Abrahamic and Mosaic (historically- not just “spiritually”), and it was definitely seen as inspired by God and special revelation. Sometimes it was seen as “redemptive” (like when Zwingli puts Socrates in heaven), and sometimes it was merely “common,” but it was never set up in some sort of dialectical contrast to the Abrahamic covenant.