Promises, Promises

There are a couple of ways (okay probably more than a couple of ways) that God is understood to have dealt with humanity throughout the ages. The two most prominent are Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology. At the risk of doing damage to either and in the interest of saving space I won’t go into too much detail on either. Suffice to say that the former proposes that God has dealt and will deal with different people groups in different ways throughout history using different covenants, or promises. The latter proposes that there are three (or perhaps less) covenants that God has made with humanity and from those theological covenants have spring several Biblical covenants.

Early in my Christian life I was taught Dispensationalism. Perhaps that’s why, even as a Presbyterian now, I can see the point of it. It’s a relatively new way of looking at this topic, apparently originating with John Darby in the 1800s, but that by no means invalidates this school of thought. It does seem, at least on the surface, that God had a different deal with the Jews than he does with the Christians for instance. That’s just one example. According the the wikipedia entry there are anywhere from three dispensations to seven or eight.

Now, as a member of the Presbyterian church, I’m being taught Covenant Theology. This seems to me to make God at least a little more consistent through time. It says that God has made a covenant of works, redemption, and grace (covenant theologians don’t agree that all of these are included) and that these promises were established “in the beginning” and have been in force since. These covenants, so CT teaches, are fleshed out in the covenants God makes with the patriarchs. So the way he deals with them doesn’t change so much as they are codified or fleshed out.

So that’s an awful lot of promises. Here’s what I propose though, and this is likely not a new or staggering idea (and I could be wrong), and that is that there is only one requirement that God has of us. Faith. If we have faith in him then everything else falls into place.

God’s first recorded words to Adam were “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Now that could be pointed out as the beginning of the covenant of works, though it’s more of a “don’t do” than a “do”. I’d say though that this was God’s way of saying “have faith in me and what I know to be best for you”. All Adam had to do, all any of us have to “do” really is to trust God. The rest will flow out of that.

We achieve righteousness through faith. We receive grace through faith. We are saved by that faith. So it could be argued I think that at the root of any “dispensation” or “covenant” God has used to interact with us is that faith in him and his plan for us is. If we have that faith, that trust then God will deal justly with us. That’s a promise.

Am I oversimplifying or missing anything?

  • Jon

    I think it's reasonable to argue that the root would be grace, and the proper response, faith.

    I'm coming from a covenantal perspective that sees God's initiative as primary, however, so let my open bias implicate what it will.

  • http://twitter.com/ObiOrion Orion Dauphin

    I think the bible shows God has two groupings. Jews and everyone else. As a Jew you are by definition God's Chosen People and have a place on earth, Israel, set aside for you and your people. That was His Covenant with them. The story of Exodus is one where, instead of requiring their Faith, God repeatedly proves His existence. It is through these demonstrations of His Power that God, and I'm not comfortable saying this, earns the trust of the Jewish people.

    In fact, much of the Old Testament is like this. Even in instances where Faith and devotion to God is tested, however painful, in the end God bestows great gifts in return.

    In the New Testament everyone else must have faith, not in God himself but in that Jesus was His only Son who gave Himself up that our sins be forgiven. For everyone not Jewish it is their belief and faith in Jesus that our salvation is assured. Jesus, never had to prove himself. Yes he performed miracles but these weren't done to establish his identity or connection to God. Often, when people proclaimed Him Jesus, He'd give His stock non-committal answer along the lines of, “It is you who say so.” I've always read this to mean that it is the person's Faith that makes it fact. Not the other way around.

    For everyone else there aren't earthly rewards like rulership, or wealth. The only reward offered is eternal salvation after death.

    Not sure this was what you were looking for in comments. It's just what came to mind after reading your post.

  • RobAC

    I personally like John Wesley's idea of prevenient grace. The basic idea is that we in our natural state would not and do not reach out to God, so God reaches out to us and makes it possible for us to respond in faith to God's grace. From this I guess one would have to say that grace comes first, followed by faith.

    I am not sure about how the covenant stuff works to day with the Jews. I believe that there is a distinction between religious Jews and cultural Jews just as there is between religious Christians and cultural Christians. I think that the important part of being a Christian or Jew is to be practicing one's faith, not just claiming membership to the “club” because mommy and daddy were Christians/Jews. But, no matter what, it isGod's grace that makes any salvation possible.

  • spiritualtramp

    See I think that prevenient grace was like a gateway drug for predestination. If you enable someone to reach out to God, why wouldn't they? If they were somehow spiritually quickened then wouldn't that be regenerated in some way? I mean that's a bit off topic, but not off the playing field.

    Going there though, if that's the case we still need to respond in faith don't we? Is God's prevenient grace shown to everyone or just a few? Either way wouldn't a response of faith be necessary and then once we've responded God shows us grace? Still seems like the covenant involves faith more than grace or perhaps just as much as.

  • spiritualtramp

    God's promise to the Jews extended beyond just the terrestrial plane. They had an expectation of a physical resurrection down the road.

    As for faith and God proving something, I don't think God was proving his existence to the Jews, I think he was showing them that he was faithful to keep his promises. In spite of that though it's still up to us as individuals to trust in him.

    In the NT we have to have faith in God as much as we have to have faith in Jesus and his sacrifice. It's all tied up together.

    Thanks for your thoughts!

  • spiritualtramp

    God's initiative is certainly primary, but it is by grace through faith that we have been saved. So perhaps faith and grace are intrinsically linked?

  • Jon

    I wouldn't argue with that. It may simply be a semantic issue that we're working through, similar to the idea that it is not our faith that justifies, it is Christ who justifies.

    Call this a splitting of hairs between the ground of our justification (Christ's work) and the means of our justification (Obedient faith), but I think it has some pretty significant ramifications once the mental shift has been made.

  • RobAC

    John Wesley was anything but a believer in predestination. I think that he was perhaps responding to the prevalent Calvinism of his day and its concept of total depravity. Wesley did not seem to dispute the idea of total depravity and, I think, used the concept of prevenient grace to help overcome this problem. As far as why one wouldn't reach out to God under the influence of God's prevenient grace, I guess that just goes back to basic human perversity after the fall (which I do indeed believe happened, even if not literally as it is recorded in Genesis although I don't reject that account either.) As far as being off topic, I think that this is simply a third major way of looking at how God deals with humanity and it was a response to Calvinism. After all most Methodists, at least, give lip service to agreement with Wesley's theology and there are millions of Methodists throughout the world.

    For our salvation to be effected, I do believe that there needs to be a human response. This I call faith. Prevenient grace, as far as I understand it, is offered to all. While a faith-filled response is necessary, if it were not for the grace of God, our plight would be hopeless. I believe that both grace and faith are essential, I simply think that God's grace is precedent. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not of works, so that no one can boast.” (Eph. 2.8-9, NIV) The way I read these verses is that salvation is a gift of the grace of God that we appropriate by faith. God is gracious, we are faithful, God is even more gracious.

  • RobAC

    I think only a few Jews expected a physical resurrection. Most believed in a kind of diminished existence. As one of my theology professors expressed it, if earthly life is like a hundred watt bulb, then life in Sheol, where everyone ended up, is like a ten watt bulb.

  • spiritualtramp

    Oh yeah he certainly wasn't so far as I know. I think PG falls short of overcoming the problem of depravity. If the PG isn't enough to motivate someone due to their perversity are some of us simply less perverse?

  • spiritualtramp

    According to what I'm reading in The Resurrection of the Son of God by NT Wirght, a lot of that depends on when in Judaism's history you're talking about. If no or few Jews believed in a physical resurrection I guess that makes Christ's resurrection and our eventual physical resurrection seem like God did a bit of a 180.

  • http://twitter.com/indianajim Indiana Jim

    I'll comment on two things: one, Dispensationalism vs. Covenant theology, and the other being Prevenient Grace.

    I think Dispensationalism and Covenant theology are not necessarily mutually exclusive things. Dispensationalism deals mainly with the manner in which God communicates with man. Think of the word “dispense.” A candy machine dispenses different kinds of candy, based on selection. Well how is God “dispensed” or “served” to mankind?

    First Dispensation: God the Father dealing directly with Adam and Eve, Abram, Moses, Samuel, the prophets, etc. etc. God is big, loud, signs and wonders, boom-shaka-laka let's have fire and wind and parting seas. Second Dispensation: God the Son in human flesh, communing with mankind on an individual and intimate basis, making disciples, fulfilling prophecy, dying as the perfect sacrifice for sin, ending the old covenant, establishing a new one. Third Dispensation: God the Spirit comes to dwell within every believer, guiding and empowering the individual.

    Covenant theology to me can be summed up very simply, and that is that God's covenant with mankind has always been and will always be one of love. You can say things like Old Covenant and New Covenant, but really they're two different (I want to call them) mini-covenants within the whole of the redemption story. Jesus has always been the thing the Old Testament pointed to.

    When it comes to works vs. faith, remember Hebrews Chapter 10. Of Moses (or Abraham, I don't remember exactly) it is said, “he believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness.” It has been faith all along. Works has always been the outward expression of that faith, of that belief. Abraham trusted God when he prepared to sacrifice Isaac, and God provided the lamb.

    God's covenant can be summed up very simply, and this leads us into Prevenient Grace, in John 3:16. God first loved the world, therefore, he sent his son into the world. Go back to Noah. He did not decide to build the Ark, God commanded him to do so. Jesus (I think) even says, “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you.” Remember he first called the disciples, not the other way around.

    I think it's too easy to fall apart in the ping-pong battle between Calvin and Arminius. Both are extremes to either side of one issue, when God is all of those things that each side believes. Yes, we are predestined, in that almighty all-knowing God knows exactly what we are going to do before we ever do it. Yet our salvation does require a human response. How is this possible? He is God!

  • RobAC

    PG is God reaching out to us because we in our depravity will not/can not seek God. While God extends PG to all some of us are, indeed, more perverse than others and we will reject and/or not respond to God's grace. As a father, I know from experience that some people are more perverse than others.

  • RobAC

    It is difficult to make general statements about a somewhat obscure facet of a faith that is thousands of years old be it Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. I don't know if resurrection was a 180 or simply a growing appreciation of what God intended. While I am not a process theologian, I do believe that there was development in understanding on the part of God's people as to God's plans. Hopefully we are still developing our understanding.

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