Introduction
Having finished “Kingdom Through Covenant” by Gentry and Wellum, I must say that I enjoyed the book and learned some really helpful things. It is always enjoyable to read people who have clearly been thinking about something for a while and who have a lot of familiarity with the language and context of Scripture. They are much more accomplished theologians than I am, so my objections might sound -well, dumb. But what can I say, these are the thoughts I have after reading their book.
Objection #1 – The authors metanarrative wasn’t “meta” enough for me
The authors’ claim is that “Kingdom Through Covenant” captures the metanarrative of Scripture. It seems to me that they are implicitly arguing that a covenant relationship with God is the optimal relationship. Or to put it another way, that being in covenant with God is what we are trying achieve in order that we can establish God’s kingdom (or that God can establish His kingdom through us). I fundamentally disagree with this because I believe that there is something more fundamental than a covenant relationship, which is natural relationship.
Covenants are constructs – not bad ones – that are created to bring two or more parties into some state of peace (the authors use the word intimacy). The whole point of a covenant is that it is a construct either 1) to bring a previously non-existent relationship into existence (marriage would be an example of this), or 2) to create conditions for a previously contentious relationship to become peaceful. In this sense, covenants are not fundamentally natural, although they are composed of natural things, like love, or mutuality, or self-interest.
But the most fundamental relationship to which we all owe our existence is not a construct. The Tri-une God exists naturally in a state of perfect fellowship, and when He created mankind, He extended that relationship to mankind in what might best be described as sonship. There is no compelling reason, outside of a systematic theology, to talk about the Father/Son/Spirit being in covenant with one another, any more than there is a reason for me to talk about my own children being in covenant with me. The relationship itself is superior to a covenant because it is deeper than a covenant. Within the fellowship of the Trinity, there is no tension between unconditional and conditional because there is no sense in which any Person of the Trinity could fail in an obligation due to the fact that each does these things by nature. To imagine a world in which the Father’s unconditional affection for the Son is met with an unwillingness on the part of the Son to fulfill the Father’s desire is to imagine a world where the river does not run to the sea. To imagine a world in which the Father does not delight in the accomplishments of the Son is to imagine a world in which the sun does not warm the earth. To imagine a world in which the Spirit fails to proceed is to imagine a world in which the sparks do not fly upwards.
When God created mankind, this fellowship was extended in what could be best described as sonship (Genesis 5:1-2, Luke 3:38), although this is distinct from the way in which the Son is “only begotten” of the Father. What Adam and Eve experienced was a naturally harmonious relationship with God, and there is a reason it looks covenantal. It looks covenantal because the purpose of covenants is to bring us into this kind of harmonious and intimate relationship.
Thus, my first objection is that the author’s metanarrative of “Kingdom through Covenant” fails to get us down quite deep enough. Where for the authors, “Optimal Relationship” = covenant relationship, my understanding is that “Optimal Relationship” = natural relationship (Sonship). By making a covenant relationship the deepest and richest form of a relationship with God, the authors invert the significance of the natural and the covenantal.
Objection #2 – Covenant is absent from the creation narrative
Because the authors predicate the optimal relationship between God and man as a covenant relationship, they need there to be a covenant in the Creation narrative. However, covenant is conspicuously absent from the creation narrative. When people use terminology like “God made a covenant with Adam”, I struggle to picture what that looks like. Did God sit Adam down and say, “Here’s the deal….”? That thought experiment feels unnatural. Like we are putting something into the narrative that is bulky and unnecessary. If covenant brings a relationship into existence that didn’t previously exist that would have had to have taken place at the time of Adam’s creation, because otherwise there still would have been a time of pre-covenant existence. As if God created Adam then laid out the terms of the covenant and then Adam goes, “Ok, give me a couple days to think about this but I’m leaning towards yes.”
There are several objections to the inserting of a covenant between God and Adam into the narrative. First, the word “covenant” is not used in the narrative (contra every other Covenant in Scripture). There is no sign of a covenant. There is no covenant ceremony, unless one considers the creative act itself to be a covenant ceremony. Finally, there is no oath. When he sins, it isn’t so much that he has violated terms as he has violated the relationship itself. Adam doesn’t break a covenant: he breaks the world. He fundamentally alters nature itself as death jumps the banks of its appointed course and floods the earth.
I suggest that the creation account can look covenantal because the purposes of covenants is to restore relationships, and Adam had a perfect relationship with God.
Objection #3 – Karat Berit vs Hequim Berit
In light of the absence of a Creation Covenant, the authors rely on a particular grammatical argument, namely that karat berit is always used of establishing a new covenant and hequim berit is always used of establishing a pre-existing covenant, thus making Genesis 6:18 mean that God was establishing a pre-existing Creation covenant with Noah rather than making a new covenant. In light of Ezekiel 16:60,62, this grammatical argument falls flat. (A longer post was dedicated to this particular topic)
There are other objections with identifying the Noahic Covenant as a continuance of a Creation covenant. For example, in light of the Fall the conditions of God’s covenant with Noah would be very different from Edenic conditions to the point that continuity would be nearly impossible. The post-Fall world was radically different from Eden. One particular difference is that the Noahic Covenant contained a different provision for murders than existed in the antediluvian world. Similarities between Gods’ commands to Adam and to Noah are easily explained as being universally applicable creational commands rather than covenant specific commands. It makes more sense to me that the Noahic Covenant is a new covenant made with all of mankind that established God’s intention to preserve the earth and humanity while imparting to civilization the responsibility of limiting the corruption of sin (like murder).
Objection #4 – All the Little Adam-ses
Through the book, the authors identify the human subjects of covenants to be “second Adams”. Which is to say that in each covenant, God was trying to re-establish the kind of covenant relationship He had with Adam through Noah, or Abraham, or Israel, or David. I really think that this is the wrong way to speak of this because none of those characters could have been another Adam because it is outside the realm of possibility that they could act as Head (Federal or Seminal) in the way that Adam did. Noah would be the closest to having this possibility, but Noah’s daughters-in-law brought a non-Noahic genetic component into the post-diluvian world, so even he falls short.
In one sense, every human being alive is intended to be “another Adam”, in that each of us is to image God and steward His world. But there is a reason the Bible does not describe these characters as “second Adams”, and that is because Adam had a unique place as the Head of humanity, and no one else in history could accomplish that, until Jesus came. Jesus truly can be the second Adam because He can be the head of a new people, created in true righteousness and holiness. But nobody else could and it confuses the position held by Adam to suggest that other characters in redemptive history were intended to be “little Adams”.
Objection #5 – New Testament Language
The New Testament (which I freely admit should be called the New Covenant) does not use the language or motif of Covenant nearly as much as it uses the language of Sonship/fellowship. This does not mean that there is no New Covenant, but it does indicate that the chief end of the New Covenant is to be brought into fellowship with God in a state of nature (sonship) rather than being party to a covenant relationship. The parts of the New Testament that use the terminology of covenant the most are focused on the passing away of the old covenant (Galatians, Romans, and Hebrews), and the word covenant is absent from all of the General Epistles outside of Hebrews. So you won’t find covenantal references from Peter, James, John, or Jude. If the metanarrative of Scripture relies on the idea of covenant, one would expect to find more language reflecting that in our Scripture.
Summary
The end goal of God’s redemptive plan is not to bring us back into a covenant relationship, but through covenant bring us back into a natural relationship best described as Sonship. By rooting the meta-narrative of Scripture in something deeper than covenant, we can find a more natural means of including not only covenant, but judgment, dispensations, human civilizational achievements, etc… into a biblical theology.
Nathan Writes 