open source theology

The Abrahamic promise and the good news of the kingdom

Thanks Hungertruth for helping the discussion along. Your dialogue with Andrew is helping me to grasp what he’s setting out here. Andrew, I apologise in advance if I seem to be coming on a bit strong with what follows. This is a subject I’m passionate about.

I find all this talk of redefinition and reinterpretation a little disturbing. It is God’s covenants which he encourages us to pin our hopes on that we’re talking about here. They are nothing less than oaths that God has sworn.

God spent many thousands of years trying to get a point across to Israel, and through them to the nations. It was this point, his blueprint/logos which was there from the beginning and never altered. Far from changing this, Jesus gave it full expression. He was and is the embodiment of God’s blueprint for creation. His preaching of the gospel of the kingdom was the affirmation of that blueprint.

In that sense, he takes over the mission which Israel failed to fulfill and through his obedience perfectly communicates God’s love and justice to the world. This overlap and transfer between the calling of Messiah and Israel rises to prominence in Isaiah’s servant songs. Jesus has come to be all that Israel was, including the priesthood, temple, law and prophetic revelation. But all this serves to forward God’s purpose for the earth, through the kingdom of Israel, not displace it.

The centrality of the land promise to the Jewish faith in the resurrection of the dead

The Abrahamic covenant (Gen 12:1-3, 7; 13:14-17; 15:4-21; 17:4-16; 22:15-18) emphasised the fact that not only Abraham’s descendants, but Abraham himself would personally inherit the land he had walked up and down in and had viewed to the North, South, East and West (Heb 11:9).

Yet he died owning only Sarah’s tomb. Indeed, in response to the question "How shall I know that I shall inherit it?" (Gen 15:8), God actually foretold Abraham’s death in advance of his receiving the promise (Gen 15:15-16 & Heb 11:13).

God’s faithfulness to his promise necessitated a resurrection of Abraham to inherit the land.

Because of this the memorial name, due to its association with the land promise (Exodus 3:15-17) was judged to be an implicit allusion to the future resurrection.

Gamaliel, the Rabbi who had trained Saul silenced the Sadducees by bringing against them Deut 11:21 arguing that "as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had it [the land] not, and God cannot lie, therefore they must be raised from the dead to inherit it"

Likewise, the Talmud in Gemara cites Manasseh Ben Israel as arguing the resurrection from the covenant promise.

So, far from being some subsidiary component in a wider scheme, the Abrahamic land promise underpinned Jewish belief in the resurrection.

Its endorsement by Jesus

Jesus placed himself firmly within this orthodox camp. In Matthew 22:31-32 he teaches the resurrection from the Chumash citing Yahweh’s self revelation as the patriarchs’ God of promise. (‘All live to Him’ in Luke should not be misunderstood as though it referred to the souls of the patriarchs experiencing a concious, disembodied existence in heaven. In context it is rendered as proof "That the dead are raised" Matt 22:31; Mark 12:26; Luke 20:37).

Its endorsement by the primitive church

In Acts 7:5 Stephen is convinced that Abraham has not yet received the land- but will.

Given the theme of this chapter, which is the rejection of God’s messengers by his people, Stephen’s example of death before inheritance may be an implicit allusion to Jesus’ having died without yet having inherited David’s throne. It follows that just as Abraham’s death will not cause the failure of God’s promise to him, neither has Jesus’.

The whole eleventh chapter of Hebrews sets the Abrahamic promise as the goal of believers throughout all ages and climaxes with a note of anticipation that if we hold fast to the same faith, we too may share that common inheritance and a ‘better resurrection’.

Regarding the hope of a literal resurrection, Daniel 12 is a case in point. There is a reluctance among some scholars to see resurrection in early writings, for example the Pentateuch. Even where it is explicitly stated in the later prophets like Daniel there is a tendency to relegate it to a metaphor for something else.

Firstly this raises the question as to how something can be used as a metaphor which is not in the first place plainly understood. The whole idea of metaphor is the relating of something that can be easily understood to something less so, in order to make it more vivid or accessible. To propose that the resurrection stands as a metaphor necessarily implies not only that it has a place in the pre-understanding of the audience. It must also mean that it is more clearly understood than the concept it represents.

Secondly, this tendency seems to have its origins in the observation by skeptical scholars that the promise set out in the Hebrew Bible is earth and time bound. Knowing the majority church dogma that God’s promise consisted of bliss in the third heaven at death, and finding no such thing in the Hebrew Bible they promptly threw the baby out with the bathwater and dismissed the concept of a hope of resurrection among Jews, for the majority of the Old Testament period and limiting it to a development as late as the return from exile. If that.

Therefore a reluctance to recognize Judaism’s solid grasp of resurrection hope is a legacy, not of solid historical findings, but of a failure to accurately hear what the prophets were saying. It is a legacy which is sadly passed on to those who, in spite of seeing the resurrection plainly taught in the Hebrew Bible, nevertheless allow themselves to be persuaded that it would not have been understood by the original hearers as such.

Why not simply say that God has always counseled his people to look for vindication and resurrection on the last day, and that this is the hope with which he comforts all the sufferers of every age. Why not trust him to have got his point across and his saints to have understood his promise at face value? Surely this best matches Jesus’ good news, expressed in such a way as to be hidden from the wise and prudent but revealed to little children.

You wrote:

Paul reinterprets the Abrahamic inheritance in terms of the Spirit rather than the land over which a king might rule.

How would you define the kingdom of God? What do you think has happened to the land promise? I don’t want to put words in your mouth but you seem to suggest that the giving of the spirit replaced it.

Does it have to be a choice either/or? Can’t we get the spirit now and the land in the age to come? Does the giving of the spirit to the Gentiles have to some at the expense of the Davidic covenant so clearly predicted?

This is rendered all the more unnecessary in view of the fact that ‘the promise of the spirit’ may equally be read as meaning ‘that which the spirit promised’. In the same way as ‘the gospel of Paul’ was not the good news about Paul, but the gospel he preached.

The Davidic and Abrahamic covenants form the gospel as defined by God. They are the key to the whole Bible.

The writer to the Hebrews is unequivocal about the unchangeableness of the Abrahamic covenant:

Hebrews 6
17 Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath:
18 That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:

This answers your statement below (I’ll add some more about the this in another post):

You would need to show that the New Testament imagined a renewed earthly kingdom (Israel) beyond the destruction of AD70.

Surely, in view of the above, an immense burden of proof would rest on anyone proposing the theological revolution that an alteration of the Abrahamic covenant would entail.

Consider the amount of attention that is devoted to the relationship of the Christian to the law of Moses. Yet the law was only a temporary provision to stand in between the promise of Abraham’s seed and his arrival. Where is the volume of clear and detailed teaching to justify the change you propose. Surely God didn’t slip something of this magnitude in through the back door!

Where is this reinterpretation stated as clearly and repeatedly as the covenants are?

You wrote: the entry into Jerusalem entails a redefinition of kingship.

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was the presentation of himself to Israel as the Davidic king. Their rejection of him simply entailed a delay. It does not force a redefinition. The question, with regards to the promise of God is, as hungertruth pointed out, one of timing not substance. David’s vacant throne will ultimately be occupied by the one to whom it rightfully belongs just as God has promised.

True, the apostles did apply eschatological prophecy to events which took place in their days but the Hebrew prophets who they quoted had always done this. They quite consistently cast current events in the light of eschatologial ones. In the face of conflict, they would remind believers of the final defeat of all their enemies in the climactic confrontation of the Day of Yahweh. This does not force us to say that the day of Yahweh happened within a generation of each of these.

In this way the rejection of Jesus’ kingship is set in Acts 4:25, in the light of the final attack on Zion’s stronghold described in Psalm 2. This does not mean that that it has been fulfilled in a sense which displaces its original meaning. This also works the other way, for example Matthew quoting Hosea 11, taking the description of a past event and applying it to the story of Jesus. None of this forces a redefinition of the event to which the text originally refers.

You wrote: ‘Why should these prophecies have been projected over the heads of the early church into a remote and unforeseeable?’

I like the way you phrased this question because it expresses exactly what I believe is being done. In a cinema the film is projected over the heads of the audience precisely in order to allow all of them an equal view of the action. Confining the message to the target audience limits its relevance to everyone else.

There is a hope set before the faithful of all ages and both testaments. It speaks to all with equal force and is of the same relevance to each. In Ephesians 4:5 Paul speaks of one hope of our calling. He explicitly equates the hope he preached with that of Israel in Acts 26:6.

When you say that there had to be some reinterpretation of that hope for it to be ‘realistic’, it seems to imply that inheriting immortality in a renewed earth was too abstract a promise to be relevant.

As compared to what? Winning a ‘battle for hearts and minds’ over the course of several hundred years? One empire replaces another, the present evil age rolls on unabated and the battle still rages on. Though many of us in the UK live relatively sheltered and prosperous lives, the world as a whole has not improved one iota since the days of Jesus. Is this really what the apostles were led to hope for?

In stark contrast to the conquest of hearts and minds, which is our mission for the interim, the consummation of Messiah’s kingdom will result in rulership of the nations with rod of iron.

Psalms 2
8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.Re 2:27 And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.

Re 12: 5 And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.

Re 19:15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

Why shouldn’t the prospect of resurrection have been understood as immediate by a scripturally informed person? Since there is no conscious existence in the grave, during the dreamless sleep of death the passing of time would not be experienced. The day of resurrection will seem to have followed instantly from the moment of death.

In conclusion

My concern about your views centers around the potential damage which reinterpreting and redefining the kingdom of God as Jesus preached it does.

To say it meant one thing to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible (Which, after all is the source document for New Testament faith) and another after AD70 is to set up two different gospels.

For Jesus preaching the kingdom of God was central to his mission (Luke 4:43). We are commissioned to do the same. According to Matthew 6:33 we are to make the first priority of our lives. We are told to pray unceasingly for its coming in (Luke 11:2 & Micah 4:8).

It should be the mission of the church to make this message known to both those who look for heaven at death and those who have no hope at all.

As children of Abraham we are called to imitate Abraham’s faith. We are to do so by believing the same promise Abraham did. This is what Jesus did through his gospel preaching and the writer to the Hebrews reminds us to hold fast to- in view of the forthcoming destruction of the temple (Hebrews 8:13).