Dr. Meredith Kline, Prologue, Lecture 17
© 2012, Dr. Meredith Kline and Ted Hildebrandt
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