Wellum observes, “The ‘land’ promise of the Abrahamic covenant must also be understood in terms of what preceded it, namely, the covenant of creation. When this is done, there is further biblical warrant to view the ‘land’ as a type or pattern of the entire creation” (Kingdom through Covenant, 709). Leaving typology aside for the moment, the connection between Eden and the land promise in the Abrahamic covenant is a strong connection.

All three of the summary categories of the Abrahamic covenant are found in Genesis 1:26-28:

Then God said, “Let us make man 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.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

This passage recounts God’s first stated blessing of man: “And God blessed them.” The blessing focuses on seed and land/dominion. The first blessing, that mankind would “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,” is tied to the seed promise. The blessing then turns to land/dominion: “fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

God’s intended land/dominion blessing was never limited to the garden. God. intended for man to “fill the earth” (1:28). Genesis 2, which is largely a development of the blessing, seed, land/dominion themes introduced in 1:28, looks to beyond the garden in verses 10-14. The river that provided water for garden (2:6, 10) also provides the highways into the lands beyond Eden. Yet when Adam and Eve leave the garden it is not to extend good and wise dominion over the earth. Instead they find themselves exiled from the garden (3:23-24). This begins an exile theme in Scripture.

These three themes of blessing, seed, and land also appear in the Fall narrative. In Genesis 3 Adam’s sin results in a curse rather than a blessing. Fittingly, the curse focuses on seed (pain in childbearing; 3:16) and on dominion over the earth (3:17-19). Adam’s role as the cultivator of the ground is reaffirmed (see also 3:23). But the ground now resists human dominion. It is painful to work the ground, and the ground produces thorns in thistles along with food. In the end it seems as though the ground will have dominion over the man because the man returns to the dust of which he was created.

These three themes also occur in the Flood narrative and in the Noahic covenant. Land words occur in Genesis 7 at a higher percentage per verse than in any other chapter in Genesis. In both chapters 7 and 8 land is at the center of the problem. instead of being filled with humans as God intended (1:28), the earth is filled with violence. This violence corrupts the earth, just as Cain polluted the ground with the blood of Abel. When God makes his covenant with Noah, he reiterates the creation blessing of Genesis 1:28, though in the context of the Fall. The nature of the Noahic covenant is to set bounds on the curse so that God’s plan of redemption can be worked out in the world. The culmination of the redemption made possible by the Noahic covenant is the removal of the curse. In this way Noah plays a significant role in God’s plan to bring the earth relief from the curse. Land plays an important role in the Noahic covenant. This is clear when God’s purposes (8:21-22) are enshrined in the covenant (9:8-17). The heart of the covenant is that God will never again destroy the earth with a flood.

Thus when we come to the promises to Abraham in Genesis 12, there should be little surprise that land has a prominent place alongside seed and blessing in these promises. Land was part of God’s initial blessing to mankind, land was affected by the Fall, and land was the focal point of the Noahic covenant. Nor, given this background should it surprise us if, as the Scripture unfolds this theme, the promise has a significance that broadens out beyond Israel to encompass all of God’s people and all of creation.

On the connection of the land promise with Eden, and on the implications of that connection for the expansion of the land promise, I register no disagreement with Progressive Covenantalists.

This is part of a series of posts on Progressive Covenantalism and the land theme in Scripture.

Progressive Covenantalism and the Land: Making Land Relevant (Part 1)

Progressive Covenantalism and the Land: Progressive Covenantalism’s View (Part 2)

The Theological Importance of the Physical World

Those who spiritualize the land promise fall prey to what Robert Saucy calls “the common view that the Old Testament deals with material and earthly realities while the New Testament deals with higher, spiritual matters” (Case for Progressive Dispensationalism, 242). Against this “common view” Paul places the bodily resurrection at the heart of the gospel:

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. . . . When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? [1 Cor. 15:21-22]

Redemption involves reversing sin and its effects, with death as the chief consequence of sin. Thus the redeemed are given life in the inner man: “and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:26). But life in the inner man alone is not the conquest of death. Christ conquers death in the outer man as well: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). (For futher explanation, see here.) At the heart of the gospel is something physical, the resurrection body.

Sin also affected the physical creation in the cursing of the creation blessing. Attending the seed blessing is pain in childbirth (Gen. 3:16) and the blessing of dominion over the land is frustrated (Gen. 3:17-19). Paul notes that “the creation was subjected to futility,” a reference to the curse. Furthermore, Paul connects the creation waiting for freedom “from its bondage to corruption” to “the redemption of our bodies,” a reference to the resurrection (Rom. 8:19-23). The reversal of the curse on creation, therefore, is an important part of redemption.

Given the tight relationship between redemption and the material creation, Saucy is certainly correct when he rejects “the common hermeneutical tendency to see statements dealing with material things as symbolically depicting New Testament spiritual realities.”

Progressive Covenantalists are in line with Saucy here. Martin writes:

Jesus taught his disciples to pray that God’s (heavenly) kingdom would come to earth (Matt. 6:9-10). The hope for Jesus’s followers, then, is not an ethereal, non-physical existence, but the consummation of spiritual realities coming into effect on the earth. Likewise, in Matthew 19 the future place of Jesus’ disciples is not described as a destruction of the earth or a spiritual, non-physical kingdom, but a palingenesia, a new world (19:28). Thus the earth has a territorial connotation and the Beatitudes an eschatological dimension. When put together, Matthew describes an eschatological reborn earth for those in the kingdom. Amazingly, the ‘blessed’ in Matthew will inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5)—the kingdom of heaven (vv. 3, 10)—and though they mourn in the present, they will reign with Christ in the new earth. [Bound for the Promised Land, 126]

This point of agreement is significant, for it forms the foundation for a commonality of viewpoint and the possibility for rapprochement that would not be possible if the land promise was spiritualized.

This is part of a series of posts on Progressive Covenantalism and the land theme in Scripture.

Progressive Covenantalism and the Land: Making Land Relevant (Part 1)

Progressive Covenantalism and the Land: Progressive Covenantalism’s View (Part 2)

Foundational to the Progressive Covenantal view of the land is the belief that the land and the land promise in the Old Testament serve as a type of the new creation. Wellum writes:

[W]e will argue in our exposition of the biblical covenants, the Old Testament text does present the land and the nation as types and patterns of something greater. From the covenant of creation with Adam, Eden is presented as the archetype, which the ‘land’ later on looks back to and forward to in anticipation of the recovery of the new creation. Furthermore, Adam as a covenant head is typological of the ‘last Adam’ to come, and as we move across the covenants, Adam and the land is developed in terms of Noah, Abraham and his seed, the nation of Israel and her land, and ultimately in the Davidic King who will rule the entire creation. [Kingdom through Covenant, 124; see also pp. 633-34, 707-13 and Martin, Bound for the Promised Land, 118-19]

In this view the typological nature of the land promise disassociates future fulfillment from the nation of Israel. Martin writes:

The Promised Land in the Old Testament—when situated within the kingdom and covenantal framework of Scripture as it progressively unfolds—was designed by God to serve as a type or pattern of a greater future reality. . . . Therefore the promise of land to the nation of Israel is understood within the broader context of God’s programmatic agenda that begins with Adam, progresses from Abraham to Israel, and culminates in an international community living in a new creation. In other words, the national dimension involving the geographical territory of Israel should be viewed as a transitional stage in the outworking of God’s redemptive plan, a plan that spans from creation to new creation and ultimately includes people from every nation filling the entire earth. [Martin, 115; see 169-70]

Related to its typological view of the land, Progressive Covenantalism understands national Israel as a type of Christ and of the new covenant people of God. Martin notes that in 1 Peter the church is “identified with the Israel of God” (2:9) (149). Wellum comments, “Israel as a people serves a number of purposes in God’s plan. It is a physical nation that is the means by which God brings about his promises; it is typological of a greater Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; and within it the true people of God are found . . . , yet it also anticipates, through Christ, the church” (646). Wellum seeks to differentiate his position from both covenant theology and dispensational theology. He rejects covenant theology’s equation of the church and Israel, noting that there are “redemptive-historical and covenantal differences,” and he denies that they “are the same kind of covenant communities” (Ibid., 646). His main point is that Israel included both believers and unbelievers “while the church is a regenerate community” (Ibid.). Wellum also distinguishes his view from dispensational theology: “One cannot separate Israel and the church too much, i.e., ontologically as much of dispensationalism does.” (Ibid.).

The typology the Progressive Covenantalists argue for is tied to an understanding of the covenants in which the “new covenant supersedes all the previous covenants in redemptive-history” (Ibid., 604). On their view the new covenant in the New Testament “is applied to Christ and the church” rather than being “viewed as both national . . . and international,” as it was in the Old Testament (Ibid., 645-46).

Progressive Covenantalists also address an obvious counter-argument, namely, that the land promise is part of an unconditional promise. They argue that the claim that some covenants are conditional while others are unconditional “is not quite right” since all covenants have both conditional and unconditional elements to them (Ibid., 609; cf. 120-21, 610, 634, 705). Wellum states, “There is a sense in which we agree with Michael Horton that Israel forfeited the promise of the land because of her disobedience, hence the reason for the exile.” In another sense, however, Jesus as the “greater than Israel” will bring the land promise to pass in the new creation as a whole (Ibid., 706; cf. Martin, 164).

The main point of Progressive Covenantalism’s theology of the land is that the promised land is not limited to the boundaries given to Abraham and Israel (Martin, 73). Martin in particular argues that Matthew 5:5; 19:27-28; Romans 4:13; 8:18-25; Ephesians 6:2-3 all universalize the land promise and that they do so on the basis of Old Testament texts (Gen. 22:17; Ps. 37:11; Isa. 61:1-2, 7) that were already pointing toward the universalization of the promise (Ibid., 125-26, 134-35, 137; cf. 96).

In making their argument Progressive Covenantalists tie together a variety of theological themes: (1) Eden as a primeval sanctuary, (2) the temple, (3) the new creation as a restoration of Eden, (4) rest, and (5) the kingdom of God. The logic works like this: if the land promise is tied back to restoring what was lost in Eden, and if Eden was a primeval temple, and if the new creation is viewed in terms of temple symbolism, then the land should be viewed as coterminous with the new creation (Gentry and Wellum, 481, cf. 213-17, 709-13; Martin, 17-18, 155). Similarly, if the land is tied to the kingdom theme and the realm of the kingdom is the new earth, then the land promise encompasses the entire new earth (Martin, 137; cf. Gentry and Wellum, 598 for a different line of argumentation). The connection with the rest theme works somewhat differently: rest in the land serves as a type of eschatological rest. Since this eschatological rest is fulfilled in the new creation, the land promise is not confined to Canaan but extends to the entire new creation (Martin, 143).

Initial Evaluation

I will argue that Progressive Covenantalists are correct to see the land theme in Scripture as rooted in Eden, intertwined with the temple, kingdom, and rest themes and culminating in the new creation but wrong to think that the expansion of the land theme beyond the borders and people of Israel entails a denial that redeemed ethnic Israelites will receive the land promised to them.

The promises of the Abrahamic covenant are often summarized under the headings of land, seed, and blessing. In finding the relevance of this covenant to ourselves, we often know what to do with seed and blessing. We know from the New Testament that the Seed is ultimately Christ (Gal. 3:16). Genesis 12 says that Abraham would mediate blessing to all the families of the earth, and we see this fulfilled in salvation through Christ. Christ is the Seed of Abraham, and Jews, also the seed of Abraham, brought the gospel to the Gentiles.

But the relevance of the land promise is not so clear. At first read the New Testament seems to say little regarding the land promise. In addition, the promise of land does not sound spiritual. Nonetheless the land promise is one of the central promises of a foundational covenant. Its significance cannot be dismissed.There are a number of ways in theologians have developed the land promise theme in Scripture.

Spiritualizing the Land

Some interpreters spiritualize the land theme. They claim that the land theme has been spiritualized, often saying that Christ replaces the land.

Dale Allison writes, “Christ’s ubiquity as a spiritual presence universalizes the notion of holy space and so inescapably relativizes the sanctity and significance of the land promised to Abraham’s descendants.”*

Peter Walker claims, “We can already see at least four different New Testament analogues for the land: heaven, the world, Christ himself and Christian fellowship. A creative biblical theology will have room for each where it is appropriate, and will not force the biblical material into one channel to the exclusion of others.”**

Christopher Wright summarizes his viewpoint:

So then by incorporation into the Messiah, all nations are enabled to enter upon the privileges and responsibilities of God’s people. Christ himself takes over the significance and function of the land kinship qualification. ‘In Christ,’ answering to ‘in the land,’ denotes a status and a relationship, a position of inclusion and security, a privilege with attendant responsibilities. This is the typological understanding which was referred to briefly in the Introduction. But what then has become of the socio-economic dimension of the land which we found to have been of such importance in Old Testament Israel? Has it simply been transcended, as spiritualized and forgotten? By no means. . . . The oneness of believers in Christ and their shared experience of Christ is no mere abstract ‘spiritual’ concept. On the contrary, it has far-reaching practical implications in the social and economic realms, both of which are included in the New Testament understanding and practice of ‘fellowship.’***

This approach falters on the significance of physical land in the Bible’s storyline.

* D. C. Allison, Jr., “Land in Early Christianity,” in Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments, ed. Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1997), 644.

** Peter W. L. Walker. “The Land and Jesus Himself,” in The Land of Promise: Biblical, Theological and Contemporary Perspectives (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2000), 117-18.

*** Christopher J. H. Wright, God’s People in God’s Land: Family, Land and Property in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 111-12.

Land Promsise Universalized

Others claim that the land promise has been universalized to encompass the entire creation in such a way that the specific promises to Israel are relativized or superseded.

D. A. Carson takes this view in his comments on Matthew 5:5:

There is no need to interpret the land metaphorically, as having no reference to geography or space; nor is there need to restrict the meaning to ‘land of Israel’…. Entrance into the Promised Land ultimately became a pointer toward entrance into the new heaven and the new earth (‘earth’ is the same word as ‘land’; cf. Isa 66:22; Rev. 21:1), the consummation of the messianic kingdom. . . . Matthew directs our attention … to the ‘renewal of all things’ (19:28).”*

David Holwerda comments:

[T]he horizons of the land have been shaped by the revelation of Jesus Christ. His previous Jewish focus on a particularistic fulfillment has been transformed into a Christian universalism focused on the new creation. Just as in Christ the temple had become a universal dwelling place and the seed of Abraham had been transformed into a universal people, so the promise of the land already embraces the world.**

Thus,

[O]ne may conclude that the original land of Canaan and the city of Jerusalem were only an anticipatory fulfillment of God’s promise. As such they function in Scripture as a sign of the future universal city on the renewed earth, the place where righteousness dwells.**

N. T. Wright argues:

Jesus seems to have said and done remarkably little on the subject of the Land. As we saw in the previous chapter, what he did say served to undermine adherence to land as a major symbol within the Jewish worldview. He moved freely—and announced the kingdom—not only within Galilee but within the largely gentile Decapolis. . . . He seems to have been well aware of the geographical symbolism of Jerusalem, not least in its relation to Galilee; but, as far as he was concerned, one of the main significances of Jerusalem was that it was the city where prophets were killed. His sense of location corresponded, it seems, to his sense of identity and, as we shall see, of timing and purpose. He had not come to rehabilitate the symbol of holy land, but to subsume it within a different fulfilment of the kingdom, which would embrace the whole creation—from which, of course, he drew continually in the narratives and imagery of his teaching and announcement.***

O. Palmer Robertson holds that the land in the old covenant was the shadow of the new covenant reality of the earth as the promised land. Thus the land promise is not to be connected to ethnic or national Israel.****

* D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 136.

**David E. Holwerda, Jesus and Israel: One Covenant or Two? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 104, 112.

*** N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God (London: SPCK, 1996), 445.

**** O. Palmer Robertson, The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2000), 25, 31, 38.

Progressive Covenantalism and the Land

Progressvie Covenantalists Peter Gentry, Stephen Wellum, and Oren Martin have done much in recent years to argue for and to flesh out the latter proposal.* I would agree with Progressive Covenantalism and those with similar views (e.g., Carson Holwerda) in their rejection of interpretations that spiritualize the land. I would also agree that the land theme in Scripture expands to encompass the entire new earth. However, I do not think that this expansion of the land theme cancels out specific promises given to the nation of Israel regarding land.

*Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical Understanding of the Covenants (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012); Oren R. Martin, Bound for the Promised Land: The Land Promise in God’s Redemptive Plan, New Studies in Biblical Theology, ed. D. A. Carson (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2015); Stephen J. Wellum and Brent E. Parker, eds., Progressive Covenantalism: Charting a Course between Dispensational and Covenantal Theologies (Nashville: B&H, 2016).