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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Is the Abrahamic covenant obsolete?


Over at Jamin Hubner’s blog, a guest blogger posted the following quote from Greg Nichols:

“One dimension of this impact calls for special attention. I refer to the perpetual possession of Canaan as a divine inheritance: ‘I will give unto thee and to they seed after thee the land of their sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God’ (Gen. 17:8) In light of this testimony of Scripture, the question arises: Is the land of Canaan the perpetual inheritance of God’s people? I offer five considerations in answer to this question.
 
First, God has already given to Hebrew Israel all the land that he promised to give them (1 Kings 4:21; Neh. 9:8).
 
Second, Hebrew Israel, as a society, is no longer God’s theocratic nation (Matt. 21:43). In Genesis 17:8, Scripture explicitly connects possessing Canaan with being God’s people. They possessed it as God’s people. Yet they are no longer the theocratic nation of God’s people. Possessing Canaan as divine inheritance lasted only as long as Hebrew Israel, as a society, remained God’s theocratic nation.
 
Third, the old covenant inheritance, Canaan, was inseparably joined to the book of the law (Lev. 25:10). Joshua allotted Canaan to Hebrew Israel by tribes. They were to retain their possession by genealogical records. The year of jubilee recognizes and perpetuates this allocation of Canaan (lev. 25:10). It is impossible to keep the year of Jubilee in Germany, or the United States, or in any other land. Canaan is the land of the book of the law. Conversely, the book fo the law is the law of the land of Canaan. Plainly, God’s people are no longer under the book of the law as their theocratic constitution. Therefore, the land of Canaan is no longer the divine inheritance of God’s people under the new covenant.
 
Fourth, God has already given his people the down payment of their better, new covenant inheritance (Eph. 1:13-14).
 
Fifth, its description as “everlasting” was also applied to other temporary institutions. The word translated “everlasting” in Genesis 17:8, literally means, “until the distant future.” Often it does signify forever and ever (Deut. 33:27; Ps. 90:2), but not always. Context must determine its duration. Scripture uses this very word to describe the duration of the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:34) and of the Aaronic priesthood (Exod. 29:28, 40:15). Scripture indicates explicitly that these other old covenant institutions terminate with the coming of Messiah. His coming is their vanishing point, the end of the age. Similarly, in Genesis 17:8, [this Hebrew word] signifies “until the distant future, throughout the entire era of Hebrew Israel’s theocracy.” That era lasted a very long time, some fifteen-hundred years, until the promised Messiah came to institute the new covenant.
 
In conclusion, Scripture does not teach that the land of Canaan is the perpetual inheritance of God’s people. I neither assert nor deny the right of Hebrew Israel to possess Canaan today. If they retain any right to Canaan, that right does not rest on theocracy, since they are no longer God’s theocratic society. Rather, any such right would grow out of the general principles of justice that apply to all territorial disputes among nations.”

The basic problem I have with this line of argument is that the land-promises in Gen 17 have reference to the Abrahamic covenant, not the Mosaic covenant. Now the “old”/“new” covenant distinction normally draws a contrast between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant, not between the Abrahamic covenant and the new covenant.

What does it mean to say the new covenant terminates the Abrahamic covenant? Is the Abrahamic covenant phased out when the new covenant is phased in? Are Christians not heirs to the Abrahamic covenant?

If this argument disproves dispensationalism, then it simultaneously disproves the covenant theology of non-dispensationalists like Tom Schreiner and O. P. Robertson. 

14 comments:

  1. You ask: What does it mean to say the new covenant terminates the Abrahamic covenant?

    Hmmmmmm? Huh?

    I ask.

    Is not the new covenant one and the same as the Abrahamic covenant only developed in subsequent generation and still being developed within our spiritual minds in this generation?

    The man, the oldest, most trusted of Abraham's servants, certainly could address the question better than most men and women, I suppose, seeing he certainly "experienced" in real time the same Covenant Maker's way of keeping His Covenant with us that He made with Abraham that the Spirit worked His faith and sanctification upon:

    Gen 24:10 Then the servant took ten of his master's camels and departed, taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master; and he arose and went to Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor.
    Gen 24:11 And he made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at the time of evening, the time when women go out to draw water.
    Gen 24:12 And he said, "O LORD, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham.
    Gen 24:13 Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water.
    Gen 24:14 Let the young woman to whom I shall say, 'Please let down your jar that I may drink,' and who shall say, 'Drink, and I will water your camels'--let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master."


    Of course, not knowing either Tom Schreiner and O. P. Robertson, I am responding to this article from the presupposition of one "knowing" the Only True God, Jesus Christ, Whom He sent and the Holy Spirit, these Three, Who are working together for my salvation, too:

    1Pe 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
    1Pe 1:4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,
    1Pe 1:5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

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  2. According to the witness of Scripture the New Covenant, mediated by Christ, is the ultimate fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant.

    Abraham looked for a city whose architect and builder is God. He looked forward in faith towards the heavenly Jerusalem, having had the Gospel preached to him.

    God's promises to bless Abraham, and to make him a blessing that extends to all nations, the New Testament writers affirm with one voice were fulfilled in Christ; partially at His first coming, and consummated in full at His second.

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  3. That sidesteps the question of how they are fulfilled. Does the Abrahamic covenant cease in NT times, is there an interadventual hiatus, or does it apply to Christians throughout the church age? To say its fulfilled in Christ fails to explain how Christians participate in the promised blessings via their union with Christ.

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  4. Those aren't the questions asked in the OP.

    Nevertheless, as you well know, the New Covenant fulfillment in Christ, and the subsequent expansion of the kingdom of God from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth are representative of the quite unimaginable extent of the great and precious promises God made to Abraham and his Offspring, Christ Jesus.

    Believers in the church age participate in the blessings promised to Abraham in many ways, but chiefly in their restored relationship with the One True God via their union with Christ, and in their enjoyment of said restoration.

    There are many facets of this of course, but participation in the church, access to God through prayer, the illumination of the Spirit, the balm of the experience of forgiveness, and the epistemic peace and rest afforded by salvation, all these are foretastes of the greater blessings to come, they are the earnest awaiting the final fullness in the age to come.

    To say the AC is "terminated" or "ceases" in the NC seems a bit misleading when "reaches completion" or "is fulfilled" seems more consonant with the witness of Scripture.

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  5. Great post on this eschatological subject: 40 Reasons for not reinterpreting the OT by the NT:
    First 20
    Last 20

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  6. You ask: "... Does the Abrahamic covenant cease in NT times, is there an interadventual hiatus, or does it apply to Christians throughout the church age? ..."

    I would answer, "no".

    I could become of another persuasion, though?

    Can you clarify the term in the sense you are using it, "interadventual hiatus"?

    Can you clarify when you believe the "church age" began?

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  7. Jacob, I assume you agree that it's appropriate to "reinterpret" OT passages by the NT in cases where the NT writers under inspiration of the Holy Spirit specifically do so, correct?

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  8. Coram Deo - Can you provide an example of where a NT writer "reinterprets" an OT passage in the same manner you want to reinterpret the Abrahamic covenant? Namely, show where a NT writer takes a passage from the OT and says it doesn't mean what it says at face value and its original audience understood it to mean, it instead only means something categorically and very different.

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  9. @Jacob

    On even this specific question, see Galatians 3:15-18. The seed to which the covenant was promised was, according to Paul, Jesus Christ, which is certainly not obvious from the context in which the promise was made in Genesis. We become heirs to the promises made to Abraham in the Abrahamic covenant by inclusion in Christ, the promised seed.

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  10. Also see Peter's "Day of the Lord" rendering of Joel in his Pentecost sermon in Acts.

    There are many, many more examples, of course (e.g. the "reinterpretation" by Peter of David's prophecy concerning not allowing his body to see corruption being applied to Jesus).

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  11. @Thomas and @Coram: Neither of those examples are places where the original and straight-forward rendering of the text is denied and excluded from its logical fulfillment. No one has a problem with the NT expanding on an OT promise, but there is a problem when you try to completely reinterpret to the exclusion of what it says at face value. Hint: There's no textual example or warrant for that, but that's what you'd need to demonstrate. But feel free to try again.

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  12. CD,

    to the question, of course we could include personal experiences with the Invisible God by ceasing from our self-works and entering into His Divine Purposes, resting, as the Prophet Nathan said to King David. Thereby we enter into that Sabbath Rest, all of us that are the Adopted by God out of this world who long to enter into that place by the same Spirit of Faith:::>

    1Ch 17:9 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall waste them no more, as formerly,
    1Ch 17:10 from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will subdue all your enemies. Moreover, I declare to you that the LORD will build you a house.


    Like there is this deep longing in the hearts of the Jews to "experience" a natural, physical place of rest, that promised land, where they can rest from the fiery missiles of the enemies of God and man, so there is a more transcendent place we are longing for as Spiritual Israel on earth, of both Jews and Gentiles as we are longing for safe passage out of this natural mire and bog and clay to the very same Spiritual Paradise the thief on the cross longed for and went to after his death, too.

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  13. @Jacob

    I'm sorry, I don't understand where the Abrahamic covenant is being reinterpreted in such a way as to deny the plain sense of it in the Old Testament? Who is doing that? I think it was simply being suggested that the New Covenant is the completion and fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant. Can you elucidate what you mean please?

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  14. Jacob,

    I'm frankly having trouble following your line of thinking.

    When Peter states the obvious and points out that David's rotten bones and rags lie mouldering in his tomb, and then proceeds to apply David's prophetic (Messianic) words to the Greater David, Christ Jesus, are you somehow suggesting that this reinterpretation in no way "excluded the logical fulfillment of the original text" which stated that God would not allow David's body to suffer corruption?

    Peter disagrees with you.

    And who here has claimed that the Abrahamic Covenant has "been denied" and disallowed from its "logical fulfillment"?

    I agree with the witness of Scripture that Christ is the fulfillment, as all of God's promises are "yes and amen in Him."

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