Is the Noachic Covenant Still In Force?
"One's ability to understand the Bible in particular and God's dealings with humanity in general depends on how well he/she understands the biblical covenants." [1] Irvin A Busenitz made this assertion in his paper 'Introduction to the Biblical Covenants; The Noachic Covenant and the Priestly Covenant.' If he is right, our understanding of the Noachic covenant is crucial to our proper understanding of the Bible.
Thesis
Following the global deluge, God made several promises while instituting a new covenant with his creation. God's post-diluvian covenant included seven components: (1) man's need to "be fruitful and multiply" over the face of the earth, (2) the subjection of the animals to man's rule, (3) the institution of civil government in the proscription of "blood for blood" punishment, (4) man's permission to eat the flesh of animals, (5) man being forbidden to drink blood, (6) a promise that the world would never again be destroyed by flood, and (7) a pledge that the normal seasonal cycle would not cease for the remainder of earth's history. God inaugurated his new covenant with the sign of the rainbow.
Is God's post-diluvian covenant with Noah and creation still in force today? Or, has it been erased by subsequent revelations and covenants? If the Noachic covenant, also called "Noahic," is still in force today then modern theological discussions about capital punishment, dietary restrictions, and eschatology will be dramatically affected. This paper will argue that the Noachic covenant is still in force, and that Christians should look to it as a moral and theological guide. This paper will evaluate six reasons why this is the case. Firstly, the Pentateuch writer, likely Moses, never suggested the Noachic covenant was terminated despite his traditionally being regarded as the founding figure of a new covenant. Secondly, the covenant passages themselves indicate the covenant would not terminate within human history. Thirdly, the covenant language suggests that the promises contained within the covenant and the truths relayed through it were not conditional or reliant on human behavior (it seems unlikely that any human action or historical alteration could have nullified the covenant's power). Fourthly, it has been argued convincingly that the Noachic covenant is a reinstitution of the Adamic covenant under which all humans have lived since creation and cannot be nullified. Fifthly, the conclusions of the Council of Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15, suggest the continuation of some of the Noachic covenant's basic principles. Sixthly, the concept of dispensational or terminating covenants is likely theologically unsound.
Mosaic Authorship Suggests Continuity
Christians have traditionally viewed Moses as the author of Genesis and thus recorder of the Noachic covenant. If that's true, he also recorded the Adamic covenant and the Abrahamic covenant along with being the founding figure behind the Mosaic covenant. If Moses believed the Noachic covenant was a temporary arrangement then why did he not suggest that while recording its history? The text's implication is that the author believed the covenant was still in force during his own time and would be in force for the remainder of history. Robert Girdlestone wrote: "The implication of the terminology [used by the author] is that these agreements are not temporary, not stop-gate, nor on a trial basis. They are permanent in the sense that no other alternative arrangement to serve that purpose is envisioned." [2] It seems that if the Noachic covenant remained in force even after the advent of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants than it must also remain in force today in the twenty first century. Nowhere in the Bible is the Noachic covenant explicitly revoked or nullified, and this negative evidence suggests the covenant's original claims to perpetuity have remained true. The burden of proof is on those who suggest it is no longer in force. However, this evidence does not seem forthcoming.
The Covenant Language Does Not Suggest It Will End
The covenant language specifically states it will last forever. Nothing in the original text implies the covenant will ever be terminated or fulfilled before the end of history.
"This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life." [3]
God claimed he was establishing the Noachic covenant with "all generations to come." Additionally, it seems to be implied by the confirmation sign that the covenant will remain in force as long as rainbows appear in the sky. Rainbows are still around, so Christians should not assume the covenant has lost its force.
The Pulpit Commentary affirms this position: "The Perpetuity of the Covenant… To Eternity. In so far as it was a spiritual covenant with the believing church, it was designed to be unto, as it had actually been from, everlasting… For perpetual generations. In so far as it was a providential covenant with the race, it was designed to continue to the end of time." [4] Lacking divine revelation overturning it, there appears little reason to believe it has lost force. Christians must be careful. Businitz wrote: "when God establishes a covenant that will continue as long as there is day and night and summer and winter, then great care must be taken not to erect man-made limitations that would bankrupt the heart and soul of these covenants and annul the glorious full realization of all that he promised through them." [5]
An interesting parallel confirming the eternal nature of the Noachic covenant can be found in the Babylonian flood myth: "A superficial but instructive parallel exists with passages in Gilgamesh and Atrahasis that relate how, when the god's partook of Utnapishtim's [Noah's] sacrifice, the goddess Ishtar raised her jeweled necklace and swore that she would ever be mindful of the days of the flood and never forget them." [6] If a pagan goddess can remember the flood forever it seems reasonable to think that the biblical God also remembers the oath he swore to his creation following the deluge.
There are two common objections to the above arguments. Those concerned with sources might argue that a single person did not write the Pentateuch and therefore the Gen 8-9 narrative does not necessarily prove the covenant never passed away. According to this objection, multiple authors are responsible for the text, and an earlier author recorded the Noachic covenant while it was still in force before the advent of the second writer who recorded the Mosaic covenant which had then overridden it. Christoph Levin wrote:
"The diversity of the material indicates that it was only at a later stage that these groups were linked to form the continuous narrative we have today. At present the view is gaining ground that the compositions were joined together not in a single literary step but in several stages, and that this fusion took place at a late period. One reason is that, according to ancient Israelite tradition, the history of God’s people began with the exodus from Egypt. Consequently it is assumed that the great OT history also originally began with the book of Exodus. According to this view, the stories of the patriarchs and the primeval history were put in front of the account of the exodus only later." [7]
I find this objection rather weak because it assumes the redactor(s) who spliced the traditions together never took the time to edit the text to match their own understanding. If the redactor(s) were living under a new covenant that they believed nullified past covenants then the incentive to edit this inconvenient text would have been significant. Even if Genesis was spliced together from different sources it still maintains the impression that the Noachic covenant retained force at the time of its redaction.
The second common objection is that the part of the covenant God made with "all generations to come" only applied to the part about never flooding the whole earth again. The earlier parts about drinking blood and capital punishment and subduing the animals was allegedly not part of God's covenant in verses 12-15. This is a strong objection, but it does not directly relate to the topic of this paper (which concerns whether the Noachic covenant retains force in the Christian era). Unfortunately, this objection will not be addressed in this paper.
Mankind Did Not Nullify It
There are passages of scripture that suggest mankind is capable of nullifying the covenants God has made with us. In Numbers 14, God almost destroyed the Israelites for their ingratitude: "The Lord said to Moses, 'How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them? I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them.'" [8] Mankind's ability to nullify God's covenants is related to covenants being mutual agreements that require the good faith of both parties. If one party violates the agreement, the other (God) has the right to withdraw his promises. Busenitz wrote: "Conditionality was an integral aspect of every bilateral covenant. Failure of one of the parties to carry out the specified conditions rendered the agreement null and void." [9] It might be suggested man has failed to keep faith in the Noachic covenant at some point in history, and that this has allowed God to withdraw the promises and truths associated with it. The text, however, never suggests this is a possibility. There were no conditions placed upon the covenant God made with his creation. The covenant was one sided in that God limited himself and commanded certain principles without asking for any "maintenance costs" from mankind. It seems unlikely mankind could have violated the terms of the covenant because there were no specific terms humans are required to keep in order to maintain it. Additionally, God's covenant was made with both mankind and the natural world. Most Christians do not believe our planet has the consciousness with which to violate a covenant.
In his commentary on Genesis, William W Gresham affirmed the unconditional nature of the Noachic covenant while also claiming the principals it communicated humanity must still be obeyed:
"This is a one-sided covenant, which means that the obligation to keep it rests entirely on the Lord. Regardless of how sinful man may become in the future, God will never send another flood to devastate the earth completely. In one sense, then, the covenant is unconditional; regardless of what man does, the promise will never be abrogated. On the other hand, if man is to live long and multiply on the earth, enjoying its blessings of seedtime, harvest, and so forth, then he must refrain from prohibited acts. Those who eat blood and commit murder do not belong in a world that has been cleansed of all wickedness, but the possibility of divine judgment will not be experienced as a universal flood." [10]
The Noachic Covenant As Extension Of the Adamic
It has been argued by Jeffrey Niehaus that the Noahic covenant and the Adamic covenant represent a single God ordained order: "I will note simply that the two covenants - the Adamic and its renewal - subsequently form one legal package under which all humans have lived, live, and continue to live until the Lord returns." [11] [12] This "legal package" includes such issues as humans ruling over animals and the principle of being fruitful and multiplying. By overturning or rejecting the relevance of the Noachic covenant in our modern world, Christians might also find ourselves in the bizarre position of having lost the basic Christian understanding of mankind within creation. It is unlikely God has fundamentally altered his creation order within biblical history or modern times. Murder is still forbidden, we still believe God's promise not to flood the world again, man retains authority over the animals, and marriage is still divinely ordained. Those who claim the Adamic and Noachic covenants are now nullified are also rejecting foundations of Godly human social order. It seems more reasonable to accept that the Noachic covenant has remained in force.
The Council of Jerusalem Reiterated It
If the Noachic covenant is still in effect than Christians should expect to find at least some of its values reiterated in the New Testament. It appears the Council of Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15, reiterated the covenant's principles: "You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things." [13] The order to abstain from blood and strangled animals would seem to suggest the Noachic covenant was still being considered an ethical authority in the Christian age. The Expositors Bible Commentary on Exodus and Leviticus has suggested a similar connection: "For the Christian the importance of the blood continues. Indeed, the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 followed the covenant God made with Noah and all his descendants (all the people of the world) that murder was wrong and that Christians should avoid the eating of blood." [14]
There are numerous possible objections to this assertion. Firstly, many have connected the Council's order to abstain from blood as targeting various pagan rituals that existed at the time. Luke Timothy Johnson, writing in an Acts commentary for Sacra Pagina, said: "The prohibition of 'porneaia'…. [recalls] sexual imagery used by the prophets as the metaphor for covenantal fidelity, the association of 'porneaia' with idolatry was inevitable, particularly since ritual prostitution seemed in fact to have played some role in the native Canaanite cults." [15] This makes contextual sense when considering that the prohibition on blood was sandwiched between a direct reference to idolatrous worship and a probable reference to pagan temple prostitution. However, the Council of Jerusalem does at least suggest a connection between the ancient respect for the life blood of animals and Christian lifestyles under the final God revealed covenant.
Can Covenants Lose Force?
Finally, it is questionable whether the idea of covenants being able to losing force is a biblical idea. The idea is characteristic of the dispensationalist thought that has emerged primarily in the United States over the course of the last two centuries. Keith A Mathison wrote: "Dispensationalism arose in the early nineteenth century in Great Britain within the Brethren movement…. [it] is a fairly new development in theology." [16] Other traditions have viewed the covenants as building upon one another while each still each retains force. Together, the covenants are seen as the evolution of God's revelation. William D Barrick wrote about this issue in his paper entitled 'Inter-Covenantal Truth and Relevance: Leviticus 26 and the Biblical Covenants.' [17] RR Reno expounded on it in the Brazos Theological Commentary:
"The covenant with Noah, however, is the ambiguous first stage in the divine project of realizing this loyalty in the flesh and blood of human life. It does not so much move history forward as stay the destructive effects of sin. For this reason., the flood is best understood as the covenant of God's patience… The blessing that changes human relations to animals and establishes the basic duty to punish transgressions lays the foundations for human survival. The family tribe, held together by rough justice, enters the flow of history. This human centered change is mirrored in the divine-center promise never against to unleash the primal forces of nature against humanity." [18]The Pulpit Commentary explained this evolution process more clearly:
"In predilluvian times the form which the covenant took, the form which the covenant assumed, was the promise of the women’s seed. From the Deluge onwards it was a promise of forbearance - 'Neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there be any more a flood to destroy the earth.' In the patriarchal era it became the promise of a son 'in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed.' Under the Mosaic… the promise of a prophet like unto Moses; during the time of Isaiah the promise of a suffering servant of the Lord; in the fullness of times it assumed its permanent form, viz., that of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ as the woman’s seed, as Abraham's child, as David's son, as Jehovah's servant." [19]
The Noachic covenant in this evolutionary interpretation is a divine revelation of God's forbearance. God will be patient with his human creation. This is a necessary step in God's revelation to men in that it ensures that God will see his plan brought to fruition rather than abandoning it half way. If the Noachic covenant was no longer in force than this revelation would be rendered void. We would, in effect, be moving backward as a people in the understanding of God's nature.
One objection to this perspective is that the idea of past covenants being nullified by new ones is not the product of a recent dispensationalist reinterpretation of Biblical history but rather a concept rooted in the New Testament's rejection of the Old Law. This objection points to Hebrews 8:13: "In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."
This is a valid objection, but it should be noted that the New Testament writers were discussing a Mosaic Law that was only ever binding on the Jewish ethnic group. In view of a new universal covenant, made with all races, Christ's covenant had superseded the ethnocentric Mosaic one. The Noachic covenant, however, was never limited in this way. The post-diluvian covenant was made with every human being who was ever going to live, but it was also made with all creation. Even the universalism of the Christian covenant would not have rendered such a covenant void.
Conclusion
The evidence suggests the Noachic covenant is still in force alongside the Christian covenant. If the covenant God made with Noah was nullified by later covenants or dispensations then it appears unlikely the Pentateuch writer(s) would have asserted its continued validity even after recording the advent of two later covenants. Furthermore, the language of the Genesis text indicates that the Noachic covenant was not meant to have a termination date, and that it extended to all future generations. The New Testament records evidence from the Council of Jerusalem that the Noachic covenant was still being referenced by the apostles for practical moral recommendations. Finally, the very idea of a dispensational nullification of past covenants, such as the Noahchic covenant, should be considered a fairly late innovation that is generally unsupported by historical Christian theology. Although objections could be raised to a number of these points, the general direction of the evidence suggests that Christians should accept the Noachic covenant as authoritative in the twenty first century.
NOTES
[1] Irvin A Busenitz, 'Introduction to the Biblical Covenants; The Noahic Covenant and the Priestly Covenant.' MSJ 10 (1999): 173-89
[2] Robert Girdlestone. 'Synonyms of the Old Testament' (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 317
[3] Gen 12-15
[4] Thomas Whitelaw. 'The Pulpit Commentary: Genesis' (Ann Arbor: Cushing Malloy, 1961)
[5] Busenitz, 'Biblical Covenants,' 173-89
[6] Nahum Sarna. 'The JPS Torah Commentary: Geneses' (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1992), 63
[7] Christoph Levin. 'Re-reading the Scriptures: Essays on the Literary History of the Old Testament' (Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 1
[8] Num 14:11-12
[9] Busenitz, 'Biblical Covenants,' 173-89
[10] William W Gresham. 'Truth For Today Commentary: Genesis 1-22' (Searcy: Resource Publications, 2014), 272-273
[11] Gordon J Wenham. 'World Biblical Commentary: Genesis 1-15' (Waco: World Book Publisher, 1987), 63
[12] Jeffrey J Niehaus. 'Covenant and Narrative, God and Time,' JETSO (2010): 535-559
[13] Acts 15:29
[14] Tempor Longman III. 'The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Genesis, Leviticus' (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 736
[15] Luke Timothy Johnson. 'Sacra Pagina: The Acts of the Apostles' (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992), 266
[16] Keith A Mathison. 'Dispensationalism: Rightly Dividing the People of God?' (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishers), 10-11
[17] William D Barrick. 'Inter-Covenantal Truth and Relevance: Leviticus 26 and the Biblical Covenants.' MSJ (2010): 81-102
[18] R R Reno. 'Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible: Acts' (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008): 126
[19] Thomas Whitelaw. 'The Pulpit Commentary: Genesis' (Ann Arbor: Cushing Malloy, 1961)