Promise v. covenant

I believe that this idea of promise is fundamental to the Old Testament and that it is even more foundational than the concept of covenant or the question of how God relates to humanity at different periods in redemptive history. The concept of promise places the focus on God, because God has made the promise, and the content of the promise is that God will send his own Son to us.

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(pp. 121-122, Don Fairbairn, Life in the Trinity)

Fulfilled from both sides

[In the Old Covenant, God] wills to be a father to his people, and desires his people to be his children. 'I will be your Father, and you will be my children. I am holy, therefore be you holy. Walk before me and be perfect.' [cf. Lev 26:12; 2 Sam 7:14; Lev 11:44; Gen 17:1]

[In sending his Son] God fulfils the covenant from the side of God, 'I will be your God, your Father', and fulfils the covenant from the side of man, 'I will be your obedient child'. This is the mighty act of the incarnation which is at once the act of God's humiliation and the act of man's exaltation, for he who in such amazing grace descended to make our lost cause his own, ascended in accomplishment of his task, elevating man into union and communion with the life of God.

(pp. 56-57, TF Torrance, The Incarnation)

Engaged, not married

I recently gave my first ever children's talk at my church on the Isrealite elders' meal with God in Exodus 24:9-11 and its connection with the table of the bread of presence! The elders' meal is a typical ceremonial OT covenant meal following the inauguration of a covenant (cf. Genesis 26:30). I drew a parallel with photos we take to remember a wedding (the bread was a memorial, for God to remember his covenant). After all, the inauguration of the Sinai covenant was the marriage of God to Israel. Sadly the marriage was not a happy one.

Ezekiel 16:8-15 graphically describes the story of Israel's marriage.

"When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendour that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God.

But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his." (cf. Isaiah 54:5, Jeremiah 3:20, Hosea 2)

Of course, the theme of marriage of God's people is strong in the NT too. In the NT Jesus is regularly referred to as the bridegroom set to marry the bride of the church (Matthew 9, 25, John 3:29, 2 Corinthians 11:2, Ephesians 5:21-33, Revelation 18-22).

But I think I made a little misstep in my children's talk in drawing a parallel to our marriage to Christ. Because it is striking that in the NT our marriage is always future (when Christ returns), in comparison to the OT where the marriage is always past (at Sinai).

I need to think on this much more but I am increasingly convinced the as a conservative evangelical I (for great reasons) focus on the finished work of Christ, but forget that this is a promise of a still future glorious relationship that I currently only taste. There is so much more to come... while it was only downhill for the Israelites (that is until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in).

The one mediator

"there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5)

There is a discussion going on at the Coffee Bible Club Blog concerning whether the Angel of YHWH in the OT is God the Son. It is at 166 comments and counting - I've never seen anything like it. I haven't had the time to get involved and I don't have firm enough opinions on it anyway.

But I do have a nagging question:

Can there be a mediator between God and humanity who is not human?

Further, can there be a mediator between God and sinful humanity, who does not share in the suffering which is the just punishment for our sin?

The letter to the Hebrews has been brought into the discussion on the blog, although I've only skim read how people have dealt with it. However it would seem to me that Hebrews says several things that are relevant (that I can think of off the top of my head):

• The Old Covenant was mediated by Angels but the New by God's own Son.
• The Old Covenant was also mediated by imperfect sinful priests the New by a perfect sinless priest.
• Jesus was tempted like we were and so can sympathise with our weaknesses.
• Jesus was made perfect for his mediatory role by suffering.

The OT is characterised by a distance between God and humanity. We have to take at full seriousness the verses about people being unable to see God and live because of their sinfulness. Only in the NT did God come close. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:5 it is 'the man' Christ Jesus who is our mediator. That is why the most common places that the NT writers see Christ in the OT are in men - the priests, the kings, the nation.

I don't think the debate is really about whether the Israelites knew the Triune God or a Unitarian God, with the Angel of YHWH as a test case. I think the debate is really about mediation and revelation.

... sorry Glen. I perfectly understand if you want to shoot me now.

Reflecting again on Tom Wright's Paul

Tom Wright has written a new book on Justification, in part to respond to John Piper.

I was listening to Tom Wright on Romans the other day and he observed that 'Righteousness of God' had three dimensions:

1. Covenant
2. Law-court
3. Eschatology

The key to the current debate is that he makes the covenantal dimension of Paul's Righteousness/Justification the 'fundamental' dimension (to quote his lecture). Most of the focus in debate has been on word studies of the dikaiosune (Righteousness/Justification) word group. There are places where this word group seems to be fundamentally covenantal (e.g. Second Isaiah) but the chips are (in my mind) stacked in the traditional interpretation's favour because the language is from the law-court in the first place (at least). To settle things though the debate has to be far wider and involve the whole of Paul's theology and ask: 'where is the centre of Paul's theology?' Once you have answered that as 'the covenant' then you can do as Wright does and 'translate back into covenantal categories' (p.43, Letter to the Romans) any language which is not covenantal in the first place. Of course if the law-court is central then you can do the same in the other direction.

I am persuaded for the moment to give the law-court pole position in this contest (see here for why) but suspect that the answer may be simpler. If you were to ask the mythical average man in the pew what was the centre of Paul's theology he would immediately answer Jesus Christ, or particularly Jesus Christ crucified. And here perhaps is the answer. Neither the law-court nor the covenant are central, they are both interdependent but separate metaphors which are trying to describe something bigger than both of them, that 'in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself'.

In my head I keep on coming back to Mark Seifrid's comment that only in Jesus is there synthesis when 'the election of Israel and the demand of the Law meet in Christ, the crucified and risen. The tension within early Jewish thought between grace and demand was resolved in an event, not a higher idea' (pp. 5-6, 'The "New Perspective on Paul" and Its Problems', Themelios, Issue 25-2). I don't know if Seifrid would agree with how I spin him but there we go.

Again and again, I learn that theologians (and more often I) sometimes lose the wood for the trees. We do so love to replace Christ with an idea.