The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Towards a Theology of the State

This is a reply to CovenantInBlood's post, Sat Aug 26 2006:


Here’s my perhaps palsied attempt at translating Tiessen’s concern -- “how does a timeless God relate to human beings?” -- into “these categories of law”:

When Tiessen said, he was claiming the existence of a feedback loop in which God responds to the acts of creatures. Within a legal framework, any act of any creature can be treated by a court as a fact. Courts exist to apply laws to facts. Tiessen is claiming that there’s a feedback loop between God and facts that are created by His creatures. To my understanding, in God’s eternal, flawless court, there is little need to distinguish between law and fact. God foreordained everything, so all facts are generated by His laws. So in His perfect realm, there are no facts in operation devoid of the laws that give rise to such facts.

Tiessen continues by saying, Tiessen hereby describes God’s dependency on facts that are created by creatures. Creatures have the illusion (or delusion?) of free-will. Their acts that are facts in the creatures’ eyes are outworkings of laws that are foreordained in God’s eyes.

The way that I look at it, “middle knowledge” is unnecessary because God doesn’t need to distinguish law from fact. Humans must recognize a distinction between law and fact (e.g., U.S. Constitution Article III § 2 cl 1) because we are slow to understand how laws apply to facts. We go through a process of contemplating, inducing, deducing, etc., before we recognize how law applies to fact. Since God foreordained everything, there is no split between law and fact in Him. Saying what I think is the same thing in Pilgrim’s words, “God’s ‘foreknowledge’ is inseparably linked and is derived from His eternal decree”. In God, the linkage between the law and fact is automatic, instantaneous, and inseparable. Tiessen’s right in saying that God’s “creatures are not libertarianly free”. Even so, God has no more need for “middle knowledge” with respect to human beings than He needs “middle knowledge” with respect to rocks. Rocks are not morally accountable because they don’t need to figure out how to apply law to fact. Humans ARE morally accountable because we DO need to figure out how to apply law to fact. God already knows how to apply law to fact with regard to everything; so He doesn’t even need to recognize the distinction between law and fact, except for the sake of communicating with flawed creatures like ourselves. So Pilgrim’s response to Tiessen’s “compatibilist account”, IMO, is correct:
God’s desire (not need) to communicate with flawed creatures for the sake of redeeming some is the vehicle through which His “highly relational personal being” appears to such flawed creatures. He appears as a covenant-maker and law-giver. He condescends from the timeless -- i.e., from the realm in which death doesn’t exist because sin doesn’t exist -- for the sake of communicating His priorities in time -- i.e., to creatures with short, sin-soaked lives. Like you say, God is “Lord of Time”. He condescends into our time-bound realm as an outworking of the covenant of redemption. In condescending from the eternal, sinless, deathless realm into the time-bound, sin-filled, death-filled realm, God separates law from fact, not in His own mind, or in His own being, but purely for the sake of expressing His “highly relational personal being” to people who don’t understand sufficiently how law should apply to fact.

By being unwaveringly committed to God’s foreordination of everything, it’s possible to understand God’s “highly relational personal being” by studying the “history of the work of redemption”, rather than by concocting dubious doctrines like “middle knowledge”. God’s knowledge of facts is inseparable from His eternal law, at least from His perspective. But the “history of the work of redemption” is a history of God’s training humans how to apply law to fact, so that at the resurrection of the dead, the relationship between law and fact is as normal and natural to the resurrected as it is to the Almighty.


To which I say, “Amen!”, and thanks for the clarification.

I agree. I’m not trying to smear covenant theology by making the criticisms of it that I’ve made. I’m just trying to fine-tune it for the sake of having it address a set of problems that to date, it hasn’t addressed well.

I think the Book of Hebrews makes it clear that the Mosaic religious ceremonies have an educational value that we should not ignore. I agree that later revelation “sheds light on earlier revelation”. I think the relationship between the later and the earlier becomes crucial when we start considering the jurisdictions of the various covenants. --- In order for a court to establish that it has jurisdiction over a given legal action, it’s necessary for the court to establish (i)that it has expertise in the subject matter, i.e., that it has subject matter jurisdiction; (ii)that it has authority over the given person, i.e., that it has in personam jurisdiction; and (iii)that it has authority within the given venue. --- IMHO, this pattern exists in Scripture as well as in reliable human legal systems. If this is the case, then for a biblical covenant, say, the Mosaic Covenant, to have jurisdiction over a given legal action, it needs to have jurisdiction over the subject matter, in personam, and over the venue. This issue is chronology-sensitive in a way that didactic application of Hebrews to the Mosaic Covenant is not.

When you say, I have to agree. My hypothetical application of Lev. 20:13 to Gen. 9:6 was inappropriate. I should have stayed with the original example, the applicability of Genesis 9:6 to Cain’s murder of Abel. --- If we claim that the didactic value of Genesis 9:6 should be used to reinterpret Cain’s murder, we cannot exercise that claim without violating jurisdictions that are clearly stated in Scripture. According to Genesis 9, the Noachian Covenant applies to the post-diluvian human race (Genesis 9:8-9; NASB):Since the Genesis 9:6 mandate against bloodshed is a term of this covenant, it has the same jurisdictional boundaries as the covenant. Genesis 9:6 certainly has didactic value in its application to Cain’s murder. But to claim that it has jurisdiction, as human law, is to ignore the in personam jurisdiction of the Noachian Covenant.