The Intrusion and the Decalogue

THE INTRUSION AND THE DECALOGUE MEREDITH G. KLINE HE often canvassed subject of Old Testament Ethics T still beckons the investigator onward in search of a more adequate solution of its peculiar complex of problems. In this search no other standard of righteousness is available to one who would think his Maker's thoughts after Him than the standard which emerges in the description of the words and ways of God which have been inscripturated. But if it is in this very connection that the problems appear, what is the investigator to do? What, indeed, but to recognize that problematic as the divine activity seems to his ethical sensi tivities, perverted as they are and so often confused by faulty interpretation of the Word, it yet conveys a revelation of law. So will he give himself again to the exegesis of the Word in the conviction that the solution of the ethical problem must be one and the same as its accurate and adequate formulation. The attempt is, therefore, made here to seek a solution in terms of a somewhat fresh formulation of certain distinctive elements in the religion of the Old Testament. THE CONCEPT OF INTRUSION It is by tracing the unfolding eschatology of Scripture that we can most deftly unravel the strands of Old Testament religion and discover what is essential and distinctive in it. For eschatology antedates redemption. It appears imme diately after creation. Farther back we must not force it lest we distort eschatology from the consummation doctrine of divine revelation into the eternal tension of a Barthian imagination and reduce the creation to a myth. Creation is not eschatological. But it does provide the pattern for eschatology. It does so necessarily, for the creature must pattern his ways after his Creator's. Since the Creator rested only after He had worked, it was a Covenant ι 2 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL of Works which, immediately after Creation, was profferred • to Adam as the means by which to arrive at the Consumma tion. In the sense that it was the door to the Consummation, the Covenant of Works was eschatological.# That door, however, was never opened. It was not the Fall in itself that delayed the Consummation. According to the conditions of the Covenant of Works, the prospective Consummation was "either/or". It was either eternal glory by covenantal confirmation of original righteousness or eter nal perdition by covenant-breaking repudiation of it. The Fall, therefore, might have introduced at once a Consum mation of universal damnation. The delay was due rather to the principle and purpose of divine compassion by which there was introduced the Covenant of Grace, with its historical corollary Common Grace, as the new way of arriving at the Consummation. For the thesis of this article it is especially significant that the delay and Common Grace are coterminous. In saying this we would not lose sight of the positive character of Common Grace in contributing toward the eschatological program, as it does, for instance, in providing the field of operation for Saving Grace and its material as well. Moreover, there is positive significance in the favor enjoyed under Common Grace by the unbeliever who is ultimately to prove reprobate because, for one thing, his present experi ence is, equally with his imminent experience in the Consum mation age, meaningful; and, for another, the aggravation of his guilt by continuing unrepentance in the face of God's new mercies provides the positive ground for a more dreadful revelation of God's wrath in the hour of Messianic Judgment. Indeed, the fact of delay in itself, which as the consequent of a successful probation in paradise could have been only negative, must be regarded as being in part positive when considered against the actual background of the Fall, for it now provides for a differently complexioned Consummation — one with a more intensive and extensive revelation of the divine perfections — from what could have been realized without it. It is not the delay of mere postponement, but the delay of gestation. But it is at the same time true that the Consummation and commonness are mutually exclusive. In this limited sense, therefore, Common Grace may be called THE INTRUSION AND THE DECALOGUE 3 the antithesis of the Consummation and, as such, epitomizes this world-age viewed under the aspect of a delay during which the Consummation is abeyant. This change in covenants from Works to Grace does not change the canons of eschatology. The creation pattern still reigns. However, though rest must still follow after work, that work must now be performed vicariously and as a soteric accomplishment by the God-man. Moreover, as already suggested, there is a difference in the Consummation reached via the Covenant of Grace. It is no longer "either/or" but "both/and". Whereas the Covenant of Works was uni- versalistic, all being in Adam either for the tree of life or for death, the Covenant of Grace is characterized by non-univer- salistic election. Some are in Christ for salvation, but some continue only in fallen Adam unto a condemnation of more stripes. Hence man's apocalyptic prospects now include both a glorified paradise and a lake of fire. And whereas eschatology was ready to spring to its goal in one leap by the Covenant of Works, it advances only by slow steps under the Covenant of Grace. Or, changing the figure, the appearance of the Consumma tion is now a birth-process in the post-lapsarian world and is, therefore, painful as well as slow. Because of the Fall, it is with sorrow that the creation brings forth so that it groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. But it is the Consummation-child himself who particularly interests us, and we suggest that he might as well be named Perez. For he breaks through beforehand, making a breach for himself. That is, the Covenant of Grace all along the line of its ad ministration, more profoundly in the New Testament but already in the Old Testament, is an intrusion into the period of delay of the power, principles and reality of the Consum mation. By virtue of this Intrusion, the Covenant of Grace is more pervasively eschatological than the Covenant of Works, which envisaged the divine introduction of the Final State as its goal but did not experience any such anticipation of it. For fixity is of the essence of Consummation and fixity is the contradiction of probation, which was of the essence of the Covenant of Works. 4 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL THE INTRUSION AND TYPOLOGY Breaking through first of all in the Old Testament period, the Intrusion finds itself in an age which is by the divine disposition of history, or, more specifically, by the divine administration of the Covenant of Grace, an age of preparation for a later age of fulfillment and finality. Its appearing, there fore, instead of being in all its heavenly finality is amid earthly forms which at once suggest, yet veil, its ultimate glory. Not to be obscured is the fact that within this tem porary periphery of the Intrusion there is a permanent core. The pattern of things earthly embodies an actual projection of the heavenly reality. It is the Consummation which, intruding into the time of delay, anticipates itself. As for the peculiar forms of the Intrusion in the Old Testament age, they have a pattern coherent and compre hensive — for things must always be done decently and in order in the house of God. Taking an Old Testament stand point among these forms as belonging to the reality that is, we may say that they also point to a reality that was (as an archetype in the heavens) and that is to come (in the Messianic age). They are antitype1 in relation to the reality that was. They are symbol in relation to the core of the present Old Testament Intrusion of that reality. And they are type in relation to that reality as it is to come. When the Old Testament forms are viewed as type, the New Testament age is to be classified along with the eternal state as their antitype,2 so epoch-making in the unfolding of the Intrusion is the revelation in the Son. This is the case even though the apocalypse of Jesus Christ and his kingdom is still in the category of Intrusion rather than perfect Con- 1 αντίτυπα των αληθινών (Heb. 9:24). 2 Some confusion arises in the terminology through the double use of the word "antitype" to signify both that the Old Testament is the copy of the prior heavenly pattern and that the New Testament reality cor responds to the earlier Old Testament pattern. Thus, not only are both Old Testament and New Testament antitype (though in different senses), but the Old Testament is both type and antitype (again from different points of view). Possibly it were better then to style the Old Testament forms simply "copies" as viewed in relation to the things in the heavens. Cf. Heb. 9:23, ύχοδβίγματα τ&ν tv rots ούρανοίς. THE INTRUSION AND THE DECALOGUE 5 summation, as is signalized by the fact that the New Testa ment age is still characterized by Common Grace, the epitome of the delay. The identification of the New Testament age with the Consummation keeps pace with the stages in the exaltation of the Son of Man, and while we see Him sitting on the right hand of power we have not yet seen Him coming in the clouds of heaven. It follows that for every aspect of Old Testament typology there is not yet a corresponding antitype.

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