Dr. Meredith Kline, Prologue, Lecture 28
© 2012, Dr. Meredith Kline and Ted Hildebrandt
The introduction of the state in the first toledoth section with Cain
Picking
up from where we were, we’re tracing the developments in terms of the structure
of the book of Genesis. We had discussed then the general structures of the holy
covenant of redemption and of the common grace program. We had in the development
of a common grace program examined especially the last time at some length the concept
of the state and how it fits within all of this. Now we took the position that
the founding of the state was within this first toledoth section of the
book of Genesis because it’s in Genesis 4:15 already that God, in dealing with
Cain’s complaints, gives to him the charter of the city, assuring him that
things will not be complete anarchy, but that there will be this institution
for law and order of seven whole divine vengeance that the Lord Himself is
going to institute. So that is already in place. We are told about it in this
first section. The general theme of which that you remember, when we discussed
the start to the book of Genesis, was that here we have to do with the entrance
and the escalation of sin in the world so that of course is the story of the
fall is unfolded here. Then the escalation of sin in the world and the postlapsarian
world of Eden is pretty much the story of the development of the state, the
city of man, which is originated here. So that’s the theme.
We tried then to see what the proper function of the state would
be. We emphasized that it was a legitimate thing. That it was a good gift of
God’s common grace alone with the family and other institutions of common
grace. Now what remains here would just be to see how this actually worked out
in history.
Introduction of tonight’s class: Sections 4-6 in
Genesis
Tonight we want to make our way hopefully then up to the
account of the flood, which will terminate this first period of the history of the
“world that then was” and to move on to sections 4, 5, and 6, which will bring
us then to the third section, bringing us to the great covenantal episode that
closes out the history of the world that then was.
Then the 6th of the 10 sections in Genesis, leading us to the next
great covenantal episode with Abraham. I would like to get then to that tonight
and deal with some features of it. It is a covenant of promise over against the
law that came later and also to deal with the question of the constituency of
this covenant and the sign of incorporation into it, which is the sign of
circumcision. At the same time that we are looking at that, of course, we want
to raise the question of how that relates then to the New Covenant sign of
baptism. Then next week, Lord willing, we will continue with the analysis of
the Abrahamic covenant and try to say something in the last three hours but the
Abrahamic covenant with its kingdom promises as understood in terms of a typological
hermeneutic which I trust we all share as over against a non-typological
dispensationalist hermeneutic. Then we also want to deal somewhat with our kind
of reformed of typological hermeneutic as over against a theonomic or reconstructionist
type of hermeneutic. So next week we will try to do those two things. Hopefully
tonight we can get that far. It’s probably too much to expect but that’s what
we’re aiming at.
So meanwhile
here at this first section which extended then from Genesis 2:4 down through
the end of chapter 4. The second section beginning with 5:1. We have the story
of how this all worked out, so we saw what the state was a legitimate gift of
God and what it’s proper functioning would be. How it should be careful not to
undercut the basic institution of the family but rather be cooperative with
them. On the other hand, how it should not be undercutting the institution of the
redemptive covenant and so on. How it should refrain from taking over the functions
of the redemptive covenant community, the cultic functions. How the state
should stick to its own particular cultural realm. So we got on some discussion
of that.
Perversion of the good gift of the state: Cain making a name for
himself
Now there was then this good gift of the state that was a
popular thing but pretty quickly it comes perverted. The very fact that the
founder of the first city, verse 15, tells us that God gave the charter of the
city to them. By verse 17, Cain, we noted, had already taken advantage of this
and had built the first city and he names it after his son. So remember when
earlier we were talking about things. We saw how important the concept of the
name was and the contrast between the covenant community and the world outside
there was that the world in general was seeking to make a great name for itself.
The covenant people were calling upon the name of the Lord. Right away the
theme of the name, making a name for yourself, emerges as Cain names this whole
city of man enterprise after himself, naming it after his son, in whom he has
this future, so that’s what’s going on there.
In my judgment this is a very long history that is compressed into
these few verses here. Chapter four the whole story from Adam and the line of
Cain here, up until the flood because, as a matter of fact, by the time you
come to the end of this first toldeoth section you have already covered
the first span. When you come to the second section it recapitulates and comes
to back to the creation of Adam and takes you to the flood again. The third
section deals with the flood. So in a very short compass here, we have a very
vast history sketched for us in terms of the cultural. The city of man developments
in the line of Cain and we come very quickly to the climax of that with the
figure of Lamech. I guess some of this will be repeating what we said in the
very first hour when, as a matter of fact, we went through this whole structure
and so we can abbreviate it hopefully here.
Lamech
We come to
the figure of Lamech and he is the one then you remember who despises all the
divine institutions of common grace of the family because he is practicing bigamy
and the state because he’s practicing tyranny. Here’s this institution of
justice, “an eye if an eye and a tooth for a tooth” that would be justice, but
he is imposing death for a slight offense against him. So he is trampling on
the institution that the Lord had provided for justice in the earth.
But worst of all is his arrogance, the blasphemy, of the divine
kingship ideology which comes to expression here because he assumes that he is
more competent for avenging himself than the Lord God would have been then to avenge
Cain. According to the traditions of the line that Lamech points back, “we hear
stories that Lamech is going to avenge Cain sevenfold back there that ancestor
of mine. I don’t need him. I can avenge myself sevenfold.” In other words, “I
am super-god.” That is the real sin that the city of man leads to something
which becomes the cult of man, where God is defied and man is deified. That’s
what happens here. Man sets himself up as a god-king in the city of man and
that’s the sin of Lamech. It can’t get worse than that. God’s not going to
tolerate it anymore.
Introduction to the Flood: anti-christ stage
Now
the flood judgment is going to come and deal with it, now we’re in the anti-Christ
stage of history. In fact, that’s what we have here, not the history of the “world
that then was,” I guess we discussed this along these lines that first hour
remember we found that here we have an eschatological paradigm. Jesus treats it
that way as it was in the days of Noah that repeats this history, so it will be
in the days of the Son of Man. So that if you’re looking at, trying to
discover the fundamental structure of the shape of things to come for us in the
New Testament era, looking to the days of the Son of Man, according to Jesus
pointing back here, here we can see the fundamental shape of history developing.
Here in the ancient city of man with the covenant people who will be described
in the next section in Gen. 5:1 and following. A community there is giving its
witness but nevertheless with the city of man and a community of those who have
this anti-Christ approach of defying God, trampling upon his institutions,
rejecting the good gifts of his common grace, and going their own perverse way.
So you have this tension developing between the two communities. To
whom does the world belong? The wicked claim it for themselves, the
righteousness are claiming it for themselves because they are the children of
the One to whom it really belongs and so on. Who will settle this? Alas, God
will settle it with a great trial by ordeal in the flood. So meanwhile things
develop and they develop to this crisis point. I’d say is a sort of beginning with
Lamech you come into the crisis, the anti-Christ stage then God intervenes. That’s
the shape of history. That’s the shape of our New Covenant history too. It’s
the tension between the witnesses of Jesus in the midst of a world that still
has God’s good common grace institutions of the state but which are being
perverted here and there. According to the testimony of biblical prophecy it will
come to a crisis, anti-Christ, the man of sin stage, which will again require
in that day of the Son of Man which is like the days of Noah according to Jesus.
This will then lead again to equivalent of the flood judgment, only now will be
the judgment that Peter tells us is by fire when as the Lord Jesus comes. So here’s
the shape of history in the shape of the “world that then was.” So that’s
what’s going on here.
Genesis 4:25-26 transitional from city of man to the covenant
community
There is
that history. With Lamech we are almost at the end of the first section. There’s
a couple more verses, two verses 25 and 26 which are transitional you remember.
They lead us from the theme of the city of man over to the theme of the convent
community, or the city of God, starting with the second section by telling us
what was going on while the city of man people, Lamech and company, were making
a big name for themselves. Chapter 4:25 and 26 tells us that the Sethite
community was a community characterized by calling on the name of the Lord, by
people who are concerned that God’s name should be hallowed and glorified. They
identify themselves as his children. He is their protector and so on. He is
their creator and owner of the world.
So we are advised at once that there is along with this unhappy
development still God’s sovereign preservation of a people. His purposes are
not going to fail in spite of the entrance and escalation of sin even up to the
antichrist stage in spite of that. God’s redemptive purposes will prevail. The
original goal that he set under the covenant of creation at the beginning that
there should be that great global city of God, “metapolis” as we have called
it, the city of heaven, the Sabbath, and so on. That goal’s still going to be
reached and the remnant is there already during all of this time.
The remnant is in the earth. Of course, the book of Genesis is
going to trace that remnant in sections 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 10. All the way
through that remnant is going to be there. There will be defections here but there
is still that elect remnant that is there that will lead up to Israel. Israel
will lead up to the Messiah. Messiah is the body of the church. Already that’s
what the second section is telling us here.
Transition from section two to section
three
Now just bypassing that for the moment at least we come to the
end of section two, which is dealing then with the line of Seth in the covenant
community. Once again that feature of transition, come to the end of section
one and you have a transition leading to section two, come to the end of
section two there is a transition into section three. Section three is judgment.
What is the transition? The transition is in chapter 6:1 and
following. Here then it backs up, picks up the story where it left it with
Lamech in section one. We got up to climax of history then we went back to
creation of Adam and the image of God. It comes to Seth and takes us up virtually
to flood again. Then this transition, as I say, picks up the story of the antichrist
theme, the Lamech theme, the divine kingship ideology theme and it tells us that
story again and gives us the general picture of things that precipitates the
flood judgment. This is described in the third section in terms of its being a covenant
for salvation that God made with Noah. So that takes us to this little section
of verses at the beginning of chapter 6. Again, in interest of time, I don’t
have enough time to spend on it. It’s in Kingdom Prologue.
Approaches to the “sons of God” and “daughters of men” (Gen. 6)
The traditional understanding of it among critics of the Bible is
that these sons of god take the daughters of men and marry them and have Nephilim
and Giborim. The critical view of the thing is then that it is a bit of
raw mythology that’s taken over from a rather well know Near Eastern mythology
of divine beings that take human women and have some monstrous breed of offspring.
That’s a bit of raw mythology that snuck into the Bible here and there it is.
That’s a view, which gets sort of baptized into orthodox
Christianity in a form of these pagan deities now being understood as angels. So
there is the view that these are angels and there are a couple of verses or so
that probably come to your mind in the New Testament that are alleged to evoke
such an interpretation of these angelic beings who left a proper state and had
relationships with human women that produced some sort of gigantic beings. Well,
there are problems with that such as when God pronounces a judgment on this
thing the judgment is strictly on man. On this particular interpretation a more
conservative version of it where they are angels you’d think that angels who
would be a primary culprit of the thing. Yet God’s verdict doesn’t say anything
about that.
In the church the dominant view has been not that the sons of god
or gods were not angels but rather that they are the godly line. So that they
think that there is a picking up of the thought that we have the line of Cain
and line of Seth. They feel in this particular episode in Genesis 6:1 and
following that the line of Cain is picked up in terms of the daughters of men. The
sons of god are supposed to be a term for the Sethites in terms of the spiritual
nature of the sons of God. So that is probably the most common view generally
in conservative circles. The problems with that is that the offspring of these
religiously mixed marriages, according to the text, would be consistently some
sort of, it depends on how you understand the Nephilim/Giborim, but the
evidence is to the effect that they have to be understood in terms of military
prowess, which would involve then the physical stature and strength. Here is a
particular line of those who qualify by virtue of physical stature, strength, and
what not to be most competent in terms of warfare and so on.
A problem with this is why religiously mixed marriages would produce
a particular physical type of strain and that’s not at all clear. That problem is
actually felt so keenly that someone like John Murrray, who advocates this traditional
view in his book, “Principles of Conduct,” in the appendix to the thing.
Actually tried to make out that the offspring who are mentioned of the
offspring of Nephilim and Giborim are not really the offspring of these
marriages but they just happen to exist in this world at that time. That just won’t
do folks. The text says that: “when the sons of god went into the daughters of
men and they had these children.” So here they are. I think that Murray’s view should
admit to the gravity of the problem.
Sons of gods as deified kings with their harems
What I think really fits into the Bible best and whole Near Eastern
background and fits context best is to see that what’s being described is
simply a development, a resumption as we said, of the Lamech theme. The proof of
the putting is those three sins associated with Lamech: the trampling of family,
trampling on the state, and the blasphemous assumption of divine status. Those
same three themes are encountered here precisely from what is being said in Genesis
6. Here again they are trampling on family. Lamech practiced bigamy, these
people are developing harems. What we have here is the picture of the ancient
king, that’s the city of man. What happened to the city of man? The kings in
the city of man ran away with things and then they abused the institution and
one of the major abuses of the ancient institution of royalty, including in the
Bible unhappily, I think of Solomon and so on, was the development of the great
oriental harem, the taking of many wives. That’s exactly what the text says. It
says when mankind became numerous on the face of the earth that these
characters, the sons of god, from what I understand is human kings, took for
themselves wives as many as they pleased. That’s the picture so they are
traveling as Lamech did on a big scale now with an institution of the family. The
whole text brings out more over of the corruption and the violence that was in
the earth by the virtue of their presence. So God looks on the situation, he
can’t put up with it anymore. So here is the violence that they were practicing
in the state in the name of justice, the perversion of it.
The key point in the whole thing is the very designation of them as
bene Elohim-- “the sons of the gods.” What has happened here was that
the author has taken out of their own months their own claim to deity, “we are
the sons of God.” So he calls them, he labels them, that which they claim for
themselves. That is their great antichrist that is similar to Lamech and more
can be said and I try to say it in Kingdom Prologue in the original
prologue.
So there then in the end of section two in this transitional thing
we have this eschatological paradigm brought up to its antichrist crisis with
these who are claiming to be God in the world. As I say this fits in with the
extra-biblical data that we get from the ancient world were in fact the
ideology of divine kingship was prevalent in Egypt and elsewhere and all
around.
Now then this calls for judgment. So the third section will
describe that flood judgment that ended that history and the way that was cast
in the form of the covenant that we want to look at.
Covenant Community
Now meanwhile
there is then the picture of the covenant community. The covenant community characterized
in that traditional section up there was those who were calling upon the name
of the Lord. My problem is how much to deal with tonight I think that is maybe
a section then that we can just thumb through quickly here. In Kingdom
Prologue it would be page 117 and following. What was it like? Here’s the
church to use that term which I usually save for the New Testament form of the covenant
community. But here is the people of God. What was the nature of their
togetherness and of their functioning of the world in that time? The people of
God were, of course, not absent from the city of man. The city of man is a common
grace institution, common means common to believers and non-believers. So what’s
going on in the city of man the general cultural activity out there is that
something only unbelievers are involved in believers are there too. So the
people of God wear their two hats. They are involved in the common grace
culture in the city of man but then they also have something distinctive of what’s
going on which is the same as the situation today. You and I are involved in
the world outside the church in our families and in our marriages. Our families
are not the church. So we are involved in the common grace functions that were described
from the beginning in terms of procreation, dominion over the world, labor, and
so on. What is distinctive of us as over against this common area? What’s
distinctive of us is our calling to be the people of God. To be those who are
calling upon his name. So that’s what’s described here in the second section. It
isn’t that detailed a description. In fact, its basically just a genealogy of
the line of Seth with a few extra details here and there that clue us in as to what
they were doing as the people of God. The fact that it is in the form of a
genealogy, a covenant line, as we have noted that’s significant because that shows
us principle of polity in God’s organization of the covenant community.
In fact, then that becomes a key point if we get to that hopefully here
tonight in the story of circumcision and baptism and whom should the covenant
be administered. The key point would be the one I’m making now, mainly that the
covenant line is one that is identifiable with family continuity generation after
generation. So the story of covenant can be told as genealogical story--the
ongoing line of the covenant. So it is here from Seth down to Noah.
Now then what characterizes them? So we try to indicate on page 117
and following the identification as the people of the Lord, as those calling on
the Lord’s name. They are identifying themselves with God confessing him and naming
themselves after him, depending upon him, witnessing of him to the world.
In page 119, in terms of covenant polity, what’s the nature of this
community. It’s a cultic community. It’s the altar. They are an altar community
right from the beginning. At the beginning of this story there’s Seth. It’s at
the altar you know that this hatred breaks out between Seth and earlier than
that already with Cain and Able of course. We have then the altar scene at the
beginning of this story. Then at the end of it we come up to Noah and this covenant
line is still engaged with the altar now. That is their identity, that they are
a people of God and that they’re distinctive life has its focus at the altar,
the place of calling on God’s name, a place of worship. So as a distinctive
people they are a worshiping congregation.
The altar and the people of God
They are an altar people. This visible altar remains as a
distinctive marker of the people of God throughout their whole history then
until we come to our Lord. He fulfills the reality of the altar of heaven so
that today the only altar is the real altar in heaven. There are some
interesting things that develop there in that one-generation overlap when you
come to the end of that Old Covenant and then the New Covenant is introduced
and then cross is made obsolete. The true altar is now in heaven. Well for one
generation until 70 A.D. the old community continues on with it’s altar. But
nevertheless in principle it is obsolete. Even though the apostles continue to
honor the altar and temple until God destroys that in 70 A.D. They did
continue to honor it but nevertheless it was thought to fade away. It is just about
obsolete and from that point on the altar is the heavenly one.
That effects the dynamics of missions and everything else
throughout this whole history where you have the visible earthly altar. It is
the centripetal focus of the life and witness of God’s people so that they are
not involved in a centrifugal missionary outreach, such as characterizes the New
Covenant period by reason of the great commission and by reason of the
persecution the apostles are forced out of Jerusalem into Judea and Sumerian
and the ends of the earth. In opposition to that centrifugal missionary dynamic
up until that point the dynamics of mission are determined by the visible
central altar. So that’s what God’s people are doing is setting up a visible
witness in midst of the earth. Attracting magnetically the attention of those
around to this witness. So it’s a coming into the focus of time rather than going
out and bringing people to a focus in the heavenly altar above. So the presence
of the altar then is a significant characterizing feature of God’s people.
Ingestion of Blood
Another aspect of it we won’t stop and deal with, for example,
when we were talking about common grace and we talked about the covenant of
common grace in Genesis 9 and one of the questions had to do with the ingestion
of blood being forbidden. How long that that continues and why? That whole
thing has to do with the presence of the visible altar among them. As long as
there is the visible altar among their midst, blood has sacrificial
significance. The concept isn’t that all life is sacred. That’s some pagan
animistic notion that all life is sacred and that’s why you don’t ingest blood.
That’s utter nonsense. What it is that at the altar blood has the significance
of that which has been forfeited, the life of man has been forfeited and
belongs to God. That’s been brought out by the presence of the altar in their
midst and because the blood belongs to God and is forfeited to him it is not to
be ingested then by human beings which would seem to trample on the thought
that it belongs to God as forfeited it to him. So as long as you have the altar,
the influence of the altar, that prohibition applies.
Now within Israel it applied. It did not apply to others outside
the sphere of the altar. The altar was within Israel. This was not something for
the Gentiles that they had to refrain from ingesting blood. This was something
for the altar community to be aware of. As I say, in this overlap generation in
which the apostles find themselves and this problem comes up in Acts 15, as to
how to handle this business of, among other things there, the ingestion of
blood. The way they settle on it, is that well as I see it, within the Jerusalem-Antioch
axis, where the influence of the altar was still present, after the cross until
70 A.D., there was still the altar. As I say, the apostles still honored it and
the temple. So as long as that was true, there were those then of the Jews who
still had all of those scruples within that more approximate area, which I say you
might describe in terms of the Jerusalem-Antioch axis, for them the Acts 15 decision
is let’s avoid the ingestion of blood. But then you can see as soon as Paul
gets himself beyond that immediate context where the altar still has some of
its influence and control and as soon as you get into Paul’s dealings and those
Greek cities and so on beyond that, where the altar is no longer significant, he
then no longer enforces the injunctions of the Acts 15 decision.
Well then I’m just trying to suggest the whole other ways in which
the presence of the altar must be taken into account of and various problems
that appear. So the altar is there.
The Covenant Community
They
are a priestly community you see therefore. They are a worshipping community.
There is no particular cast or specialized priesthood. There is the universal
priesthood at this altar. Just as now when there is no longer an altar on earth,
but the altar is in heaven. There are no altars on earth. There are no special
priests on earth either.
Now the universal priesthood is there all the time. All of God’s
people then have access to him individually at all times but you don’t until you
come to Israel, have a specialized order of priests who are typological of Christ,
the mediator Priest. So there is the universal office priest that we have at
all times, Old Testament, New Testament it doesn’t change. In fact since its
universal, I think maybe it’s a contradiction to call it an “office.” Maybe we
should save the word “office” for special things but there is a universal privilege
of a priesthood let’s say.
But then Christ is a different sort of one in that he is one who is
a mediator, which shows us that we don’t have access to God in ourselves but
only through him. So as types of that special meditorial priesthood in the Old
Testament God sets up the Levitical Aaronic Priesthood and that continues until
the real priest comes. So with the coming of Christ the real priest with the
real altar, the real sacrifice, and the real temple. The reality all moves up
to heaven and on earth there are none of these things anymore. We see this one
overlap generation creating some ambiguities along the way but the basic
reality is that from this point on clearly from 70 A.D. the only holy places
are the heavenly ones. There are no holy places on earth and therefore no the
altars on earth. We shouldn’t be talking about altars.
Not
holy places any more: in spirit and truth we worship
So
any who in their ecclesiastical polity speak about a special priesthood, which
is something distinctive from the universal priestly privilege of everybody,
speak about a special order of clergy priests then. This is anachronistically
carrying on the notion of a special kind of typological priesthood after the
antitype priest has come. It is an effective denial of the fact that the real
anti-typical priest has come. There is no need anymore for these prototypes,
the type special mediatoral priests are all around. So that kind of church
polity just as a total contradiction of the advance that we have come to in
Christ in the New Covenant and that we are beyond that typological stage. We
are in the fullness of time. So let’s not talk about altars or special priests.
Let’s not talk about sanctuaries like on the other side of the wall there
because this is an anachronism, which in principle, denies that Christ has done
it. Now we worship spirit and truth. Not on that mountain over there, you women
from Samaria, not on that mountain, nor in Jerusalem. There is no earthly place.
Neither Gerizim nor Jerusalem is holy anymore.
There are no holy places on earth anymore; only in heaven is there
the true sanctuary. Therefore from now on we worship God “in spirit and in
truth.” How that gets diluted. Its meaning we use “in spirit and in truth,”
but it doesn’t mean that from now on we worship God sincerely. What, did we
worship God insincerely before? That’s not what it’s talking about, it’s
talking about in heaven in the Johannine vocabulary, in spirit and truth
describe the heavenly realm. The bread from heaven, the true bread, the manna,
that’s what true means, it’s the heavenly reality. “Spirit” as we had occasion
see over again, spirit is heaven. So by “in spirit and in truth,” Jesus is
setting up the contrast between worshipping at some symbolic typological earthly
altar and worshipping in terms of the heavenly where Christ is seated at the
right hand of the Father up there. So we’ve got to be true to the eschatology
of the Bible and not to deny it even with this kind of innocent loose usage
which we applied to our church meeting places. So this is a favorite theme of
mine. Now we got our ten-cents worth in on that. Now there was a new dictionary
of architecture. Now what can we do there?
That’s another one like the two tables of the covenant. They can’t
get it out of the vocabulary of the people. They’ll always use it that way. “Sanctuary,”
I’m afraid is going to be used forever. But when it becomes official in the
polity and liturgical practice of any group, they talk about a priestly order
and they talk about altars and so on, then it is highly objectionable and we
have to speak out against it.
[Student comment] In terms of worshipping in spirit and truth would
another application be, for example, under the Old Covenant the law was written
on tablets of stone not in the hearts but at that time were people still, not covenant
people, but they were considered spiritually dead because Christ had not risen yet
so he could dwell them with his spirit?
[Kline’s response] I didn’t think you want to put it that way. They
are regenerate. If they are God’s people they are true believers. It is only
because they have been regenerate and the spirit has already worked in them.
[Student comment] In terms of what they are looking forward to, the
promise. It was like in Romans Paul talks about how he worships God with his
spirit rather than an outward form of the Old Covenant and how he was born
again by the Spirit would that not be an application of this.
[Kline’s response] I’m not sure if that’s the way Paul would be
putting the difference between the two things. He would be identifying his
spirit as the opposite of the letter. For example, when he talks about the law
being written no longer with letters on stone but by the spirit on the heart,
what he is contrasting I think is the principle of works and the principle of
grace because in the whole context then he identifies with the Spirit that this
is the covenant of life and justification. Whereas the “letter” correspond to
justification of works and death. So what Paul’s doing is there is he is describing
the difference between the Old Covenant and the works arrangement and the New Covenant
as an arrangement of grace.
But what Paul would do, and I think what we have to do, when we
were talking about the way in which Christ enters into the world and fulfills
the eternal covenant with the Father and that he should do such and such and as
a result of that then the Father would glorify him. So there is the ascension
that takes place. We made the point that although what Christ does is very late
in history over against the fall back here. It is very late in history when the
legal basis, the cross. It is the legal basis for the gift of the Spirit and
these other blessings, in spite of the fact that that comes so late in history.
It is so certain that Christ was going to do it over against the first Adam,
remember that we put it this was for all time, that already the Holy Spirit is
being given from early on so that in Israel and as well as before that, the Holy
Spirit is at work. So that fundamental process subjectively of salvation is
the same in the Old Testament as in the New. Even though they are looking in
terms of their faith apprehension of Christ as something that is to come
inwardly they already have the same benefits of that. The same way we do, namely
in the presence of the Spirit who regenerates and gives them true the spiritual
life and so on.
[Student comment] “In terms of truth Vos deals with that briefly in
Biblical Theology for anybody it’s on page…”
[Kline’s response] Does it deal with the Johannine terminology That
would be the last part of it.
Transcribed
by Rebecca Corshia
Rough edited by Ted Hildebrandt