Divine Covenants and Moral Order

A Biblical Theology of Natural Law

David VanDrunen

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780802870940
• eBook ISBN: 9781467440639
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This book addresses the old question of natural law in its contemporary context. David VanDrunen draws on both his Reformed theological heritage and the broader Christian natural law tradition to develop a constructive theology of natural law through a thorough study of Scripture.
The biblical covenants organize VanDrunen's study. Part 1 addresses the covenant of creation and the covenant with Noah, exploring how these covenants provide a foundation for understanding God's governance of the whole world under the natural law. Part 2 treats the redemptive covenants that God established with Abraham, Israel, and the New Testament church and explores the obligations of God's people to natural law within these covenant relationships.
In the concluding chapter of Divine Covenants and Moral Order VanDrunen reflects on the need for a solid theology of natural law and the importance of natural law for the Christian's life in the public square.]>

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

Natural Law under the Covenant of Creation

A biblical theology of natural law appropriately begins at the outset of the biblical story. Accordingly, this chapter undertakes a detailed exegetical consideration of several important matters in Genesis 1 and 2, in their own context and in the broader context of the canon of Scripture and Christian doctrine. I argue that these two chapters lay a foundation for a full-orbed theology of natural law, and this foundation is crucial background for the ideas developed in the rest of the book.

Of particular importance is the image of God, a concept relevant to biblical studies, Christian theology, and natural law. In biblical studies, the terse statements of Genesis 1:26–27 concerning human creation in the divine image and likeness have generated a large body of literature. In Christian theology, the image of God has served as the key organizing theme of theological anthropology, with reverberations in other areas of theology such as the doctrine of the Trinity, Christology, and soteriology. In regard to natural law, the idea that the image of God somehow defines human nature could hardly be more relevant. Yet, for the most part, the topic of the image of God has not facilitated fruitful interdisciplinary conversation among exegetes, theologians, and natural law theorists. Scholars have observed a frequent disconnect between doctrinal studies of the image of God and exegetical studies of Genesis 1:26–27,1 and recent constructive theories of natural law do not engage the relevant exegetical literature.2

In contrast, I develop the initial aspects of a theology of natural law in this chapter through interaction with contemporary exegetical studies of Genesis 1:26–27 and attention to many historic doctrinal issues associated with the image of God. Though the presence of a covenant in Genesis 1–2 is a controversial issue, the traditional Reformed doctrine of the covenant of creation (or covenant of works) will serve as an integrating feature of my conclusions and will serve to connect these conclusions with the argument of subsequent chapters.

The argument of this chapter unfolds as follows. First I define what the image of God (and human nature) was in the original creation: the image consisted in being God’s physical/visible representative on earth, entrusted with an official, royal-judicial commission to exercise dominion on earth in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, toward the goal of eschatological enthronement in the age-to-come. The image, understood in these terms, is not a static ontological reality but a dynamic, historically/​teleologically/​eschatologically oriented office that entails being equipped for a task, performing the task, and attaining a goal.3 This defined human nature as originally created. What human beings were made to be and what they were made to do cannot be separated, and hence human nature was inherently ethical. Second, I place this conception of the image in the context of the Reformed doctrine of the covenant of creation. I explain and defend the idea of a covenant at creation and argue that the creation of human beings in the divine image toward the goal of their eschatological enthronement was itself a covenantal act of God. Finally, drawing upon my conclusions about the image of God and the covenant of creation, I describe the character of natural law in the world as originally created. This natural law cannot be understood as static deontological principles but as a moral order by which human beings were normatively directed toward a creatively fruitful life in exercising righteous royal dominion in this world toward the eschatological goal. The original natural law required the exercise of both love and justice. It required love in terms of abundant generosity toward fellow creatures and required justice in terms of giving to all their due and exercising retribution for wrongdoing. Such love and justice reflected the likeness of the God who revealed himself in creation both as abundantly generous toward the world and as the just enforcer of his law.

The Image of God at Creation

The biblical theology of natural law developed in this book depends upon a proper understanding of the image of God. Fundamental in what follows is the idea that the image of God bestowed in the first creation (what I will call the “protological image”) is not identical to the image of God as preserved after the fall into sin (what I will call the “fallen image”) and that neither of these is identical to the image of God bestowed upon believers in Christ as a gift of the new creation (what I will call the “eschatological image”). There is organic continuity, but not identity, among them. The image of God should be understood in the context of humanity’s original orientation toward an eschatological destiny, its deflection from that destiny, and the attainment of that destiny in the work of Christ.4 God made human beings to progress historically from one state of existence to another, and thus human nature as expressed in the image of God must be conceived dynamically rather than statically (unlike what has often been the case in Christian theology).5 Such an understanding of human nature promises to have significant implications for a theology of natural law, if indeed human beings know a moral law by nature.

In the first section of this chapter I develop a definition of the protological image of God and thereby identify the character of human nature as originally created. In subsequent sections I connect my conclusions explicitly to matters of covenant and natural law.

The Royal Exercise of Dominion as God’s Representative

During the last several decades a remarkable consensus has emerged among biblical scholars seeking the meaning of the image and likeness of God in Genesis 1:26–27. Gunnlaugur Jónsson already recognized this emerging consensus in 1988 in his exhaustive study of the history of interpretation of Genesis 1:26–28,6 and with the exception of a few dissenters biblical exegetes have maintained this consensus to the present.7 An increasing number of theologians, attentive to developments in the exegetical literature, have begun incorporating its insights into their broader dogmatic treatment of anthropology.8 The core idea of the consensus is that the image and likeness refer to the exercise of royal dominion as God’s representative on earth. Advocates of this idea frequently relate the biblical statements to Egyptian and/or Mesopotamian views circulating in the ancient Near East and often speak of the image as holistic (as opposed to residing in some particular ontological feature of the human person).9

As Jónsson and others have noted, this consensus emerged in the wake of James Barr’s seminal work, which called for a more modest use of word studies and emphasized the importance of context for determining the meaning of biblical words and sentences.10 Trying to determine the meaning of

(“image”) and

(“likeness”) in Genesis 1:26–27 solely by use of word studies is fraught with difficulties. Perhaps most importantly, both terms refer to a variety of things in the Old Testament (OT) and thus neither can be given a single, airtight definition that determines its use in Genesis 1. Furthermore, word studies cannot determine whether the terms “image” and “likeness” are meant to convey two distinct aspects of the human person or are overlapping and even interchangeable terms describing the same reality in slightly different ways. Additional philological complications surround the translation and significance of the two prepositions,

and

, which precede “image” and “likeness” respectively. They too bear different shades of meaning in the OT. If these prepositions bear their usual meaning in 1:26, yielding a translation such as “in the image and according to the likeness,” then understanding image and likeness as distinct concepts becomes more probable. But Genesis 5:3 tantalizingly reverses the prepositions (“in his likeness, according to his image”), suggesting the interchangeability of image and likeness. Thus some exegetes have argued that

in Genesis 1:26 and 5:3 does not bear its usual meaning but should be translated as “according to” or “as” (the so-called beth essentiae), which makes its meaning similar or virtually equivalent to

in these verses.11

At best, a word-study approach suggests a number of possible readings of “image” and “likeness” in Genesis 1:26–27 but provides nothing definitive. This indeterminacy creates the temptation to choose a reading that fits a certain predetermined theological conception of human nature, thus making the text proof for what one already believes for extra-textual reasons. A number of significant theological issues are implicated by the interpretive difficulties presented by Genesis 1:26–27. For example, much classic Christian theology has associated the image with the soul rather than the body, but word studies of “image” show that the term very often refers to something visible and physical.12 Another example is that classic Christian theology has often understood the image to refer to certain ontological human attributes that resemble divine attributes, but while word studies of “likeness” indicate that the term connotes similarity, they do not specify the nature of that similarity in Genesis 1.13 Furthermore, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions have historically made a clear distinction between the image and the likeness, while Protestant theology has tended to equate them, adding a potentially complex theological layer to attempts to define the terms.14 Finally, the suggestion by Wolfhart Pannenberg that human creation “in the image and according to the likeness” means that an image and likeness of God already existed prior to the appearance of human beings (namely, the Son of God) means that a possible weighty organic connection between God’s Trinitarian nature and human image-bearing is directly affected by the translation of the little prepositions

and

.15

In my judgment, the contemporary shift toward interpreting the creation of human beings in the “image” and “likeness” of God in the context of Genesis 1:1–2:3 has offered a salutary way forward. If for no other reason, this shift respects Barr’s compelling claim that individual words have meaning only as they function within sentences as parts of larger texts. If the words

and

generally indicate visible representation and resemblance, as so many biblical scholars believe, then the context of the original creation story provides great insights into the character of this representation and resemblance.

The contemporary exegetical consensus also provides notable confirmation of important insights in Reformed thinking about the image. While much of the broader Christian tradition has located the image in certain ontological features of the human person (such as rationality or volitionality) and in the soul over against the body, Reformed theologians have tended to take a more holistic view of the image (involving both body and soul) and sometimes have highlighted the exercise of dominion.16 Holistic views of the image also appear elsewhere at times among non-Reformed theologians.17

In what follows I offer a series of brief arguments that the image and likeness of God, in the context of Genesis 1:26–27, refers to human beings as commissioned with the royal exercise of dominion as God’s representatives in this world. These arguments therefore constitute a defense of the general consensus among contemporary biblical scholars about the image in Genesis 1. After presenting these arguments I address another important aspect of the protological image which, though not unrecognized, is underappreciated in the contemporary literature: the eschatological destiny inherent in the image. Upon completing these arguments I will be prepared to offer a general definition of human nature as originally created.

The Dominion Mandate

The obvious and central consideration that commends interpreting the image as representative kingship is the creation mandate, in which God sets before the newly created human beings the command to be fruitful and multiply and to exercise dominion over the other creatures. Genesis 1:26 states God’s intention in this matter and then 1:28 records the divine command itself: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man18 in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ . . . And God blessed them. And God said to them...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Appendix 1: Natural Law in Contemporary Literature
• Appendix 2: Neo-Calvinism and Natural Law
• Appendix 3: David Kelsey’s Anthropology and the Image of God
• Appendix 4: The Heavenly Court View of Genesis 1:26
• Appendix 5: Noahic Natural Law and the Noahide Laws in Jewish Ethics
• Bibliography
• Index of Names and Subjects
• Selective Index of Biblical Texts Discussed