The Baha'i Studies Listserv
Dear Gary,
I do not think that a lesser covenant does end, when it is breached
by the mortal party. You quote:
> Matthew 21:43: "The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given
> to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."
which happened -- but does Israel at that point become just another
heathen people, knowing nothing of God and under no obligation? I do
not think so. The people may chose - or make - a god of their own,
but Moses comes right back down from the mountain and they have to
grind their god up and eat it. There is no "easy out."
Our obligation under the covenant is not only unconditional, it is
open-ended - it means following when God does a new thing. Lesser
covenants therefore change, but the obligations are not suddenly
lifted by the change. As Jeremiah said:
31:31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
31:32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers
in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the
land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an
husband unto them, saith the LORD: 31:33 But this shall be the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those
days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and
write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be
my people.
31:34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and
every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all
know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the
LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their
sin no more.
which I correlate with Matthew:
5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 5:18 For verily I say unto
you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no
wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 5:19 Whosoever
therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall
teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven:
but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called
great in the kingdom of heaven. 5:20 For I say unto you, That except
your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and
Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. 5:21
Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not
kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:
5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother
without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever
shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council:
but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
5:23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; 5:24 Leave
there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled
to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
In the Jeremiah passage, the continuity of the Covenant despite sin
is associated with God's forgiveness. Perhaps, if God was to stop
being the forgiving God, then sin and disobedience would end the
lesser covenant, and end the obligations it imposes. But that is not
a possibility that the biblical writers had in mind.
And yes, I know what the epistle of straw says about Jeremiah
(Hebrews 8) - but I do not understand that the old covenant vanishes
from the world: for the children of the new covenant it is subsumed
and alive within the new, for the children of the old covenant it is
alive and demanding: and one of the things it demands is that they
hear the voice of Jeremiah.
Sen
On 6 Oct 2008 at 15:43, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> It seems perhaps that we see the distinction between eternal covenant
> and a temporal lesser covenant in Isaiah 51:6: "the heavens shall
> vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment,
> and they shall dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my
> salvation shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not be
> abolished." The lesser covenant proceeds from the Eternal Covent as
> the heavens and earth proceed from Eternal Deity, yet it is still
> covenant, while the heavens and the earth are not God; when the lesser
> covenant is broken the Eternal Covenant is broken. (Isaiah 24:5) It
> might make sense to say that while world of being "emanates" from God,
> the lesser covenant "manifests" the Eternal Covenant in the sense that
> 'Abdu'l-Baha uses it in Baha'i World Faith pp. 314-315, making
> possible the rending of the eternal covenant in the ending of the
> conditional, temporal covenant.
>
> With respect to "God gets another people, the Israelites get another
> god, end of story", this may be precisely what Jesus is saying to the
> Mosaic covenant and dispensation in Matthew 21:43: "The kingdom of God
> shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the
> fruits thereof." In the light of Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of
> Universal Peace, p. 161 "the Hebrew prophets were sent to announce
> Christ, but unfortunately the Talmud and its superstitions veiled Him
> so completely that they crucified their promised Messiah" and other
> similar passages, one might say that each time a covenant community
> rejects a new Manifestation, they do, in effect, choose the God of
> their own imaginations and superstitions. (cf. BWF p.381-382 "All the
> people have formed a god in the world of thought, and that form of
> their own imagination they worship; when the fact is that the imagined
> form is finite and the human mind is infinite. Surely the infinite is
> greater than the finite, for i
> magination is accidental while the mind is essential; surely the
> essential is greater than the accidental.
>
> Therefore consider: All the sects and peoples worship their own
> thought; they create a god in their own minds and acknowledge him to
> be the creator of all things, when that form is a superstition -- thus
> people adore and worship imagination.)
>
> Am I completely out in left field with these connection?
>
> Gary
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sen & Sonja <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Baha'i Studies <[email protected]>
> Sent: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 3:27 am
> Subject: Covenant Question(s)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> The Baha'i Studies Listserv
>
> I've been hoping to find time to research the thinking behind the idea
> of conditional covenants, but it's not going to happen this week at
> least, so I'll just have to go with what I already know - or think I
> do.
>
> My problem with the idea that a religious covenant can be conditional
> is that I do not know of any good example, and it looks to me like a
> confusion between a covenant being two-sided, and it being conditional
> on performance. Those are two different things. You can see the
> confusion in the fact that the same things are called variously a
> conditional covenant or a covenant of works (two-sided), while an
> unconditional covenant is called a covenant of grace (unilateral act).
>
>
> You say there was a Covenant with Adam to protect and and guide him in
> the garden: but is this truly beriith, covenant? The idea of a
> conditional covenant seems to enter Christian theology in the 16th
> century, with Bullinger: but he says the first conditional covenant
> was the one with Adam and Eve *after* the expulsion -- and that is not
> a covenant but a curse (gen 3:15-19) and an explanation of the way of
> the world (not only of the toil and pain of life, but also of how easy
> it is to fall into pass-the-buck behaviour. This is myth, and we have
> to ask what the storytellers were telling their audiences with this
> story. I can't see any concept of covenant in it.
>
> Nor do I see anything conditional about the Mosaic Covenant. When the
> human side broke it, they did not cease to be bound to it, and they
> did not cease to be, to God, a chosen people. This is surely a good
> example of the unconditionality that is part of the concept of
> Covenant. If it was a conditional contract, then once broken it is
> over: God gets another people, the Israelites get another god, end of
> story.
>
> I think that the confusion begins with putting Covenant in the
> category of legal agreement and thinking about it, and about grace and
> forgeiveness themselves, in a legalistic way, as something dependent
> on "satisfaction" - which looks to me like a translation of quid pro
> quo or the "consideration" that must be exchanged in contract law.
> Covenant is about committment in fellowship, it's the walk with God,
> the musketeers saying all for one and one for all and then living it.
> Having misunderstood covenant as contract, other things are called
> covenants when they are not, and the Covenant is used as a sort of
> legal framework to explain what makes commandments binding,
> punishments just, "satisfaction" necessary, and so on.
>
> The importance of this in Bahai theology is that the lesser covenant
> is literally called a covenant - making an analogy between it and a
> covenant proper. The lesser covenant is legal in form: it has written
> documents, it designates succession, it stipulates powers and limits,
> it is the fundamental constitutional law of the Bahai community, it is
> the framework for the legitimacy of laws and punishments, and so on.
> How is the lesser covenant analogous to a covenant proper? I think it
> is in two ways: it is unconditional, and like the ancient (Noah)
> covenant, it promises a continuing walk with God: it is fundamentally
> about fellowship. Being unconditional, we do not get to decide that
> it's not working so we can walk away. The end of the Guardianship, or
> a decision we do not like, or being disenrolled from the community,
> does not entitle us to say that God has stopped walking with us, that
> the covenant is over or that we are not part of it any more. It is
> unconditional.
>
> Sen
>
>
> On 25 Sep 2008 at 5:22, Gary Selchert wrote:
>
> > The Baha'i Studies Listserv
> > Some Christians (perhaps most) divide Biblical covenants into
> > "conditional" covenants which blow up in your face (and pretty much
> > end)when you violate their provisions, and "unconditional" covenants
> > which are essentially Divine Decisions and do not change based on
> > human actions. God's Covenant with Adam to protect and provide for
> > him in the garden of Paradise is the "original" example of a
> > conditional covenant. It ended in effect when the human partyr
> > violated and broke it. The covenant of Moses also contains many
> > warnings that God's blessings could end with Israel's disobedience.
> > In sharp contrast are the covenants of Noah and Abraham which are
> > divine promises and do not include warnings that their blessings are
> > contingent on human response.
> >
> > How (if at all) does this approach to covenants relate to the
> > not-a-Deal, not-a-Contract view of the meaning of a Divine Covenant.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Gary
> > __________________________________________________
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