Dr. Meredith Kline, Prologue, Lecture 17

But it was a paradise, it was the original land flowing with milk and honey. Right now, where are we? We’re on page 34. I remember a few weeks ago, someone asked a question and by way of answering it I anticipated that the heart of what we’ll be saying again here in the next few pages.

What was Eden like?
So, all right, what was it even like, when you picture the garden of Eden? We said, alright, we should think of it in terms of God’s holy presence, the mountain of God and so on. But then, beyond that, there are other questions that do arise. The covenant servants in Eden found themselves in a divine protectorate, under God’s guardian care. Certainly, that was so. Everything man encountered in this realm, spoke to him of his Lord’s sovereign goodness. Manifested in God’s creative acts, that goodness continued to be displayed in perfect constancy in his providential government of his creatures, the Lord of the covenant who created man’s world order also preserved it. God’s goodness was evident all over the place, that’s certainly so. Man’s homeland in Eden is proverbial in the Bible, as the Paradise ideal, well watered and fertile. I gave a series of Bible passages where they say, such and such a place was like the garden of Eden. That’s the ideal thing. There grew all manner of trees, the glory of the vegetation kingdom; there roamed all manner of representatives of the animal kingdom; accessible nearby too were the resources and the treasures of the mineral world; all these kingdoms spheres of creation were richly stocked with provisions to satisfy man’s physical needs and delight his aesthetic sensitivities.

            Nor had the Creator left the first man socially unfulfilled. He had blessed the man with woman, the woman with the man. He made mankind, male and female, king and queen over the garden of Eden. Everything there was great. So, the original covenant order was thus everywhere one of blessing, beatitude. For there, in the garden, the Creator raised his hands over man in protective prospering benediction.
            Now of course, when you read all of the terms of the covenant, there is the threat that you can lose these, but if you lose it, it’s going to be your fault. As things come from the hand of the Lord himself, the original condition of man traceable to the creative fiat alone, could reflect only the pure goodness of the Creator, the covenantal kingdom protectorate was at the first, a realm of unmixed blessing. I think we are all agreed on that.
            Now, however, what I am going to try to suggest is that some traditional ideas of what things were like in the garden of Eden are too idealic and idealized on the one hand. I think another problem with the traditional approach is that what I have tried to emphasize about the supernatural presence of the God of glory - I’m not so sure that that element is in the common notion about Paradise. So we’re missing the boat in terms of this wonderful feature of God’s visible glory presence there in their midst on the one side. Then on the other side, I’m complaining, that as to the physical character of things there, there has been a tendency to over idealize things.

                                       Blessedness and the curse
            Now involved here is the question of the meaning of the biblical concept of the blessing and the curse. We may gather this by asking whether it necessarily, I’m just trying to focus the question here now, by asking whether it necessarily follows from the pure blessedness of man’s original state, that the earth at that time, before the Fall, does it necessarily follow just from the goodness of God that at that time the earth was without anything violent or dangerous? That the ground was without thorns or thistles? That there was no death in the world? Do these things follow necessarily from the fact that this was a territory of unmixed blessing and that the curse comes only after the Fall?
            Now, this question may be approached, I suggest, by examining the pattern of consecration. When we discuss the days of Genesis, we keep coming back to that thing. We found a pattern of consecration that was present where these various kingdoms were established and they were consecrated to the use of the kings of the second triad of days.

                                       The Higher orders principle
            Now, I suggest that as you analyze, here’s a basic principle, I think no one will want to dispute, the fact that God has set things up so that law or orders are serving the higher interest of higher orders. They are consecrated, everything ultimately consecrated to the higher interest of man. Man, of course, in turn, is consecrated to the higher supreme interest of the Lord Himself. But now, when you further analyze that concept of consecration, and what’s going on as you go up the ladder here, you get yourself involved in not just consecration, but the idea of sacrifice. Then as you analyze the concept of sacrifice, it takes on a specific form of death as well. All is part of the original created order. Such subordination of interests assumes various forms, and among these specific forms of subordination are consecration met with sacrifice and death are especially important.
            In the inter-relationship of the law or orders of creation to one another, there were forms of subordinations that did not amount to sacrifice. The kingdoms of light and darkness are subordinated to the rulership of the luminaries, who are the kings of day 4. What does that kind of subordination, that kind of consecration involve? Well that involves regulation. These kingdoms were regulated. This is a function of kings, to set bounds and to regulate things. Well, the luminaries are setting the bounds and regulating, there is no element of sacrifice involved especially in that.

                Lower orders serving higher orders in the Garden of Eden
            But now let’s go on to something else. When we move along, however, to the use made of the soil by the plants, so now we are talking about elements described here for example, on day 3. What happened to the land and the vegetation, watch the way the air is utilized by the birds and the beasts or the waters by the fish of the seas. In other words, when you try to relate the way in which the birds and the fish of day 5 serve themselves of the kingdoms of the sky and the sea, then something beyond regulation is involved.
            There is here, a royal exacting of tribute. There is an assimilation on the part of these higher creatures of lower elements into higher orders. In this process, these lower elements in the air and in the sea, undergo conversion, change, and loss. We may regard this as an elementary form of sacrifice that is undergone by these kingdoms as they serve the higher interests of these living creatures. So here is a form of consecration that involves a sacrifice, a change in the simulation of the law or orders. Then, proceeding still further, there is that form of sacrifice that actually involves, death. When something belonging to the organic, living level of creation, is sacrificially consecrated to something higher, then the biblical usage warrants our describing this as being death. So all I am talking about here, is especially plants. Here are organic living things, and the plants experience death in their own growing process. Of course, then as they are also simulated, they are used by those who eat them whether animals or beasts.

                          Death before the fall for plants not humans
            This is biblical language and I’m thinking of the way our Lord in John 12:24 and the Apostle Paul in 1Corinthians 15:36, both speak about the seed, the corn of wheat, that “except it die,” and that’s the biblical language. It has to die in order to bring forth fruit. So that, there is death in the plant life. It can’t be disputed. This is biblical language. There is death in the world here, as part of the original natural order of things as God created it.
            Now mind you, in this whole discussion, we are not leaving the door open for a second for the thought that there was human death. Definitely our contention is the traditional position, that for man, death is the wages of sin. No Fall, no death for man. But now, we’re not talking about human death, and the problem is with the people who are squeamish about the conclusion I’m coming to, is that they are unable to distinguish clearly enough between the significance, the meaning of death at the human level, and death at these other levels. They have an anthropomorphic interpretation of the subhuman. They see animals, you know, giving science that for human beings would be pain and so on. They interpret it as having the same value as a human being experiencing pain. They don’t want any part of this nature which is red with tooth and claws and all this sort of a thing. But that’s a mentality that comes from the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and likeminded non-sense ideologies but it doesn’t come from the Bible. So I think that we should sensitize ourselves to the scriptures and if we do so, we will not interpret animal experience or still less, plant experience in terms of human experience. So, no death for human beings before the Fall, but yes, death as part of the natural order law.
            Now, what is the biblical case for this? So I tried further then to focus this issue of whether there was death in the world by taking up the question of whether here, right from the outset, it would have been proper for Adam and other human beings that would have come along apart from sin to make use of animal life. I don’t suppose any one could dispute that they made use of plant life. So there was plant death. But could they make use of animal life, could they take animal life? Could they introduce death into the animal realm in that way in order to serve their own higher interest in whatever way? Of course, animals could be killed and thus provide for all kinds of human needs and so would that have been acceptable from the beginning.
            You can sharpen the question still more by asking just in terms of diet, food, was man necessarily compelled to be vegetarian before the Fall? Could beef steaks or even pork chops been part of the regular diet from the beginning. I am arguing, of course, yes, they could have been. The question then that calls for consideration in this connection is whether the idea of man before the Fall, sacrificing animal life for his own higher interests, whether that idea is compatible with the Bible’s representations concerning the original state of blessedness.
            Now, my case, and I’m on page 35 now moves along this way: since all creatures were subordinated to man’s dominion, we’ve seen that in terms of this pattern of Genesis 1. All creatures were subjected to man’s rule. He has dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and everything else. So that is so. Then, moreover, we have also seen that sacrifice and death are normal forms of consecration even before the fall. Since those two things are true then and all things that are subordinated, are consecrated to man, and sacrifice and death are normal forms of consecration. I can’t for myself find any principial objection then to man’s putting animals to death, thus consecrating them to his own higher interests.
            Moreover, it is generally conceded, I don’t know if all of you have conceded that, of course, there are the Institute for Creation Research people who wouldn’t concede this, but, I would say that most will concede that the study of natural history shows that all animals, as a matter of fact, had lived and perished, not just before the Fall, but even before man appeared on the surface of the earth, including all those dinosaurs from about 135 million to 65 million years ago who lived and died. Death was in the animal world and all these fossil remains are not all post-lapserian remains. As I say, most people would recognize then that there was death, not just of individuals but of all species that came and went, not just before man fell, but even before man was created in the world.

                              Biblical evidence for pre-Fall death
            Now however, some more specific biblical evidence, and I cite two or three passages here in this page 35, that I think useful. Psalm 104 is nice. Psalm 104 is one of those when we spoke about Genesis 1 itself, it has a sort of semi-poetic flavor. Now there is a meditation on the creation account in Psalm 104, which is beautifully poetic. It’s celebrating God’s wisdom in the various things that he made and as it’s described there. This wisdom of God also finds expression in his providential control of things after the Fall as well as before. But certainly what is being described includes and really primarily focuses on the world as God created it right from the beginning. What were the advantages of the different things and the beauties and the wisdom of different things from day to day and the night? That’s part of what God created, the cycle--the cycle of light and darkness, of day and night. Look at the wisdom of God, how he from the beginning was taking account of the needs of all his creatures, including those little lion cubs that would be yelping to daddy lion to bring them home some wildebeests chops for breakfast and how the Lord provided the cover of darkness therefore for the daddy lion to go out more effectively and to track down and to capture the prey and to bring it home to the den to feed the young lions. What a wonderful wisdom the Lord when he set up the cycle of day and night right from the beginning to accommodate the predatory functions of these creatures that he had made.
            In other words, this is not as I said, the mentality of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but it’s the biblical mentality, that God set it up this way. He wasn’t squeamish about the lion killing the wildebeest. So we look at all of these nature movies on TV and there is the tiger, there is the lion and there is the cheetah going after the gazelle. They’re going over the landscape and zigzagging back and forth and we are all routing for the gazelle. But the gazelle doesn’t always make it and the cheetah captures it sometimes. That’s part of the good order of nature, even though you might look at the tender brown eyes of the gazelle and pity the thing. But you shouldn’t interpret that thing in terms of human pain and experience. It’s just part of the way God sets things up from the beginning as Psalm 104, then around verse 21 indicates.
            Now also, the question of diet comes up more specifically. In 1 Timothy 4:3-5, and Paul here, takes up the fact that the false teachers who were forbidding some of them to marry and others forbidden to eat various kinds of foods and meats. Paul says it’s all wrong thinking here, because, God made these things, all of them to be received with thanksgiving. They’re all good. So, here’s the language of God’s intention from the beginning in creating them. He created them for this very purpose. So whether the Bible throws some light on the subject for us or not, it does not support the traditional scruples along this line.
            Now, in the light of this then, why is it that the other point of view is the prevalent one. In the current debates within PCA and the OPC over the whole business of creation and the length of the days and so on. This is part of the problem that people see there that they say that the view that I am now suggesting, is part of the approach that will hold to an old earth and so forth. They are vigorously opposed to this idea as a violation of basic orthodoxy of our theology. Well it is not a violation of it. This tradition is just that, a tradition that doesn’t have adequate biblical foundations.

                            Man’s rule over the animals and plants
            But, why is it so prevalent? I suggest here the main arguments that I have come upon, if you have some others, you might want to mention them. But time is flying away much faster already than I had hoped it would. But we’re on the bottom of page 35, and the top of page 36. We’ve come to the end of chapter 1 in Genesis. So we have a higher hierarchy, that pattern of consecration we were talking about and how God has established this higher hierarchy among his creatures with man at the top over animals and plants. So as you read those closing verses, beginning with verse 28, Genesis 1:28, “God blessed them and said, ‘be fruitful, increase, fill the earth, subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air.’”   So there man is given dominion over the animals. So that’s the first point. It’s stated just in the most general terms, rule over them. His rule of course, over the animals is going to take various forms. The animals are going to serve man in all kinds of ways, not just obviously for food, but the animals are going to provide him with transportation. They’re going to pull his plough, they going to provide him with hides and furs for clothing and so on and so on--so all kinds of uses. It is just stated in the most general terms that man can rule over animals.
            But then it also says that man, of course, is also the ruler over the vegetation world. The most obvious way in which that comes out is the fact that vegetation is something that man can eat. Crucially, that’s not the only use of plants, but that’s the conspicuous use, and so it is stated that way. Then the text goes on to say, not only is man over the animals and over the vegetation, but then, there’s also this hierarchy between the second and the third stages. Animals are also higher than plants, because animals also, they eat plants and so that’s the way the thing is set up.
            Now the appeal that is made to this is based on the assumption that there’s a silence there. It doesn’t say specifically that man can eat animal flesh but it states in general terms that he is to rule over it. As I just pointed out, the various uses that he makes are in fact so varied that, it has to be stated in more general terms, but that the eating of them is excluded is not a warranted assumption at all. Then, a further point is this, that there is a special reason for saying at this point that man may eat plants and vegetation. What’s that special claim? Well, its setting things up for chapters 2 and 3, where you’re going to get this special probationary prohibition, that’s going to involve man and vegetation. That’s going to be such an acute test of man’s obedience, precisely because it’s going to be in defiance of what is stated here that plants were given to man for food. Yet, God says here’s a plant that you may not eat. So, it’s in the anticipation of that development, man’s probationary testing and so on that we can understand the special specific mention that he may eat of all kinds of plants. There is the one passage that has been appealed to.

                                                  Eating meat
            The next one is in Genesis 9, this is after the flood. Here, things are going to depend as they often do on the right translation of the passage. I don’t know what I’m going to find when I turn to the NIV here. Chapter 9:3, “Everything that lives and moves, will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.” That seems to suggest that what God is saying is, “Look, up to this point, you’ve been able to eat plants, but from now on, you’re going to be able to eat meat as well as plants.” Now, that’s not the right meaning, that’s not what appropriate translation of the Hebrew bears out. What the text is really saying is, “Look, up until now, you’ve been able to eat all kinds of plants, and now, you may also eat all kinds of meat. Not just that you may eat meat for the first time, but that you may eat all kinds of meat.”
            Now, what’s the point of that? Here, you’ve got to see the context, what’s going on here. From the Fall on, the world was common, there was nothing holy. Do you remember what we said, when we were setting up our theocracy squares on the board, you come to Noah’s ark, and here you have a holy theocratic kingdom. Later you come to Israel, and you have another holy, theocratic kingdom. Now, what goes on in these holy theocratic kingdoms, in terms of meats? The distinction arises, let’s come to Israel where we are all aware of the facts, right away. In Israel, you have a distinction made in meats, between clean and unclean.

                            Clean and Unclean animals in the ark
            Now, all of a sudden, back here in the story of the ark, you encounter the concept of clean and unclean animals when Noah’s being told how many of them they need to bring into the ark. You remember, one pair of unclean, but seven pairs of the clean animals are being brought into the ark. You hadn’t read about that kind of distinction before, because it didn’t exist before. Everything had been common, and you didn’t have the idea of a holy sphere that was set off from the non-holy, the clean from the unclean. Now you do, just as in Israel, later on, you have that again. God introduces this distinction within their lives in other to underscore the difference between them as his called out holy people and the rest of the world out there that was defiled and unholy. So this is just a way of pressing that point home. But meanwhile, then, here they had been, for one year, within the ark, and I would say that what was going on there, you can understand in the light of its parallel over here, within the ark experience. They could eat, only the clean animals, they couldn’t eat the meat of the unclean animals. Up until that point, yes they could, they could eat any kind of meat up till that point. But now for one year, within the ark, within that special theocratic situation, they had been applied to refrain from eating unclean animals.
            Now where are we? We are just beyond that. Genesis 9, where our passage is taken from is this Covenant of Common Grace. Here is the Covenant of Common Grace, and what God is saying is, “Look, now you are back in the covenant of common grace in terms of your diet, you are no longer in terms of a theocracy with its particular scruples. So, once again, you are out of the ark, now you are back into common grace, well, no holy theocracies, and so we’re back to normal again. Now just as you could eat any kind of plants, you already eat any kinds of plants, so now, once again, you can eat any kind of meat, just as was the case before the ark.”
            Now, that that’s what’s going on there is demonstrated very clearly by the fact that the same thing happens after this theocracy. Here, not just for one year, but for centuries. Israel was bounded to a system where they couldn’t eat unclean meats. Now here they’re just beyond it and we come to the book of Acts chapter 10, isn’t it, “Here you are Peter, this is just like Genesis 9 where Noah had to be told, ‘Hey look Noah, never mind that clean and unclean business anymore, they’re all clean once again.’” So now, Peter learned the lesson that Noah had to learn. We are no longer in a theocracy, we’re back to common grace once again, you can eat all kinds of meat. That’s what is going on here.
            So the text isn’t saying, now you can eat meat for the first time. This passage of Acts is the one that strongly supports my position, because, it makes sense only as you understand that all along they could eat all kinds of meat. Okay, and that’s, a fairly quick explanation of it. When we come to Genesis 9 and the covenantal organization of common grace, there’s a more complete explanation of these things, I guess in Kingdom Prologue.

                                         The world before the fall
            But we have to move on. Beyond these two passages then, there is the general kind of feeling that people have about what the world must have been like before the Fall, that they arrive at by looking at pictures of what the Bible says about the world of heaven to come. So, they feel that when they read biblical prophecies about heaven, and the predatory beasts lying down with their former victims peacefully, that here you have a literal picture for one thing, of the way things are going to be. Then the assumption is made that the way they are going to be is a restoration of the way they were before the Fall. That therefore, before the Fall, there couldn’t have been any predatory animals, and that’s the case that is made up.
            There are all kinds of fallacies involved in it. One of which is that you can’t simplistically look at what heaven is going to be like, and say, that’s the way things were like in the garden of Eden. In heaven, we’re going to have glorified bodies, so you can’t look and see glorified bodies then, and say that Adam must have had a glorified body. He didn’t. Heaven is not just a restoration of Paradise as we said, but it’s Paradise consummated. It’s Paradise taken to the stage that it would have come to if there had been a successful probation and glorification and all of that. So that’s simplistic.
            Another fallacy is, they are taking the passage literarily, the whole problem we discussed a little bit earlier. What is the new heavens and the new earth? How much of a discontinuity is there between that and the present order in the configuration of the galaxies? If there are such things and heaven will it be an exact duplication of the present cosmic system of galaxies? So will there be anything there that we recognize as planet Earth itself in a solar system that is like ours? We don’t even know the answers to these questions, and so we certainly can’t speak confidently that there will be, predatory animals or any other kinds of animals. There are all kinds of questions involved, but that you can’t take this business literarily that there would be no animal death there is contradicted if you’re following a literalist approach, by other passages in the Bible. Let’s speak about heaven in terms, of course, being the great feast, the great banquet, which is what I always like to say, which is not provided for by some seeds that they picked up at the local health store here, but probably features the fatted calf, you know, and what not. So you would run into conflict with one biblical passage and another if you are trying to treat them all literarily.
            Another thing that strikes me as significant if you’re trying to think of something which is proper, in terms of an ideal realm, then you look at the Lord Jesus and his resurrection experience, which anticipates the state of glory, where in his resurrection appearances, he partakes of food, he eats fish and so on with the disciples. That suggests to me that there is nothing improper in any sense of the word and in human beings taking animal life in order to feed themselves. If the risen Lord in his glory there, is doing that. So these are all considerations then.

                    Death and threatening circumstances in Paradise
            So why is there such a hide bound insistence then on this view that really doesn’t have biblical support. I think it’s unfortunate, but let’s meditate on it further.   As I said, that involves then in the question of if there was death in the world of plants, animals and so on, then. What is it that made Paradise a state of blessedness? As I argue there, and as we discussed before, there was death there in the world and there were threatening circumstances that were there in the world, and things that could frustrate man and such things that could harm him, do bodily damage to him. There could be avalanches that would fall on him, there would be seas in which he could drown, there would be cliffs he could fall off, there would be stones he could break his toe on. These things were all there. It wasn’t that these things undermined the state of blessedness, because, God’s sovereign control was there, and that’s the secret, that’s the meaning of blessedness. It isn’t the presence of the threatening objects, but it is the way in which God controls the situation. He keeps those threats from being actualized in the experience of his people. His people do not fall off a cliff, they do not drop, because, God takes care of them. The cliff is there, the sea is there but God takes care of them. So, blessedness consists in the fact that God’s favor is on you. He gives his angels charge over you so that you don’t dash your foot against a stone. So there’s no contradiction of the idea of the blessedness of the original order, just by recognizing these features are there, if you have a big enough view of God as the sovereign God of all creation.
                                   Creation Groaning (Rom. 8)
            Romans 8 doesn’t say anything different than what I have been saying. That’s, of course, another passage that’s often appealed to wrongly because what Romans 8 is saying here is that the whole creation is groaning in travail together with the sons of God, waiting for the day of redemption, the resurrection of the bodies of God’s people, because the whole creation has been subjected to corruption, not willingly, but in terms of God’s ordering of things. You remember the passage, so that is all the time referred to as a description of the results of the Fall, and that there’s been some basic change in the order of nature itself whereby death for the first time enters the world and so on.
            That is not valid, because it’s not what the passage is talking about. What Romans 8 is talking about, you will discover when you see the roots of it, because, back in Isaiah 24, 25, 26, 27. I think I mentioned the other week, is this little apocalypse of Isaiah, in which the key problem he is dealing with is the problem of death, death and resurrection. And so it’s right in the middle of that in chapter 25 that you get the key passages of that. Death is being swallowed up in victory and so on, that Paul quotes in 1Corinthians 15, a little later on. A couple of passages in Paul, Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15 as well as Romans 5, are all very much drawing on roots from this little section of Isaiah 24ff. So Isaiah 25 is dealing with the theme really is the resurrection victory of the Lord over death. You come to the end of the thing in chapter 26. It’s a wonderful passage there, where as they are giving a comforting picture of how at last, the voice of God’s people is let loose, that’s been covered over in Sheol. The ground has been covering over the cry of God’s people and now it is heard. So right at the outset in Isaiah 24, Isaiah describes the lamentable picture. It is sort of like in Romans 5. We were talking about where it was by the breaking of the original covenant that sin and death entered into the whole world, and death prevailed over everybody. That’s what Isaiah 24 described. So it describes right from the beginning how the realm of nature is mourning, that’s the term you’ll perhaps find in every translation, but that’s the proper translation - that the whole earth is mourning and languishing together, with the humankind over this problem, that death is everywhere because they broke the everlasting covenant. That’s the passage we cited the other day when we wanted to show that the Bible uses the term “covenant” for the original arrangement there. The everlasting covenant was broken, and that is how sin and death came into the world. That’s where Paul got Romans 5 from. That’s where he also gets Romans 8 from.
            The business of nature groaning and mourning together with man, that’s Isaiah 24. In Isaiah 24, what’s the problem there?—death. The problem is death. When human death enters the world as it did at the Fall, now from that point on, the ground, the earth, the creation, is obliged to play a new role that it didn’t play up until that point. Up until that point, man stood on the earth as a king over the earth. Now man, the ruler of the earth, dies, he returns unto the dust. So Paul and Isaiah personified the ground, as mourning and groaning over this new role that they are obliged to perform, that they have to absorb, they have to take into themselves. Those who are made in the image of God are the dead. They must absorb this corruption within themselves. The earth must become the netherworld, that it must become the cemetery and play that role. That’s what the earth doesn’t want to play, and most especially, what the earth doesn’t want to do, it doesn’t want to have to absorb the death of the saints and the martyrs, and the blood of Abel and these others that sink into the earth. The earth has a sense of revulsion at having to cover over the corruption of the dead and to conceal and to suppress the cry of the martyrs that can’t rise to heaven for vindication. Its longing therefore, as Paul goes on to point out in Romans 8 for the day of the resurrection. That’s when the problem will be solved, when the dead are raised up. Then the earth is no longer performing that cemetery, netherworld function. So that’s what the whole passage is talking about. It’s a much more exciting theme than the other for one thing, but it has nothing to do with some basic laws of nature being changed as a result of the Fall. It’s just this new role. So these are the main things that I have come upon as factors in this discussion.
            Student Question:
            Kline’s response: Yes, I have an article on that, that appeared in … it was called something like “Death, Leviathan and the Martyrs” or something like that in Isaiah 24-27. It appeared in a Festschriften, that was written in the honor of Gleason Archer, I think that was the name of the volume, the name of the volume I think was a tribute to Gleason Archer. The editor of it one of the editors was Ronald Youngblood, he is the editor of, or has been, he just gave up the editorship of JETS a year or so ago. But he and someone else were the editors of these and my chapter in that was on those. So the exegesis that I just condensed is developed at some length there.
            Student Question
            Kline’s response: I don’t know if the book is still available, I’ve forgotten who published it. I’ll check it out, and I don’t think I have or that they sent me any off prints of that article that I could distribute. I’ll look and see if I have off prints of that, in which case I can bring one and we can re-print.
            Student Question.
            Kline’s response: Paul was very much involved in Isaiah, and as I said in Romans 5 and Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 15. These are all big passages you know, and all of them are very much developed in Isaiah 24, 25, 26 and chapter 27. In Isaiah 27, he picks up the Romans 11 thing that is another big passage. So the connections of Isaiah and Paul are very fruitful.
            Okay, meanwhile I’ll see if I do have any off prints which will be much easier. I won’t have to go off to publish my collected works here.
            Where are we now? That finishes Genesis chapter 2 then, the good gifts of God to man, the way he made him as king, and the holy kingdom over which he placed them. But it does raise these other issues which are important in themselves, and some of them, much debated. This may be a good time for a little break I think. Let’s try to keep it to 5 minutes because we have about another 3,000 years of history I want to cover.

Transcribed by Dolapo Anyanwu

Rough edited by Ted Hildebrandt