Kingdom Through Covenant

Just completed Peter Gentry's recent article in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology (vol. 12 no. 1, Spring 2008), "Kingdom Through Covenant: Humanity as the Divine Image." It is great! Go to your nearest seminary library and read it!

He walks through Genesis 1:26-28 very slowly, considering the biblical theological framework first and then an exegesis of the text with attention to its cultural and linguistic setting. But buyer beware! This isn't your standard systematic theology's image of God.

Here are some quotes to whet your whistle:

"In biblical revelation God communicates in the culture and language of the people. Yet in employing language God also fills the terms with new meaning. The key to correct interpretation, therefore, is to compare and contrast the biblical text and the data from the contemporary cultures. One must not only notice similarities between the Bible and the ancient Near Eastern background, but the differences which show the new meaning being revealed by God." (26)

"Genesis 1:26 defines a divine-human relationship with two dimensions: one vertical and one horizontal. First, it defines human ontology in terms of a covenant relationship between God and man on the one hand and second, it defines a covenant relationship between man and the earth on the other. The relationship between humans and God is best captured by the term sonship. The relationship between humans and the creation may be expressed by the terms kingship and servanthood, or better, servant kingship." (32)

"God has planned a new creation -- a new heavens and a new earth. Unlike the first creation where he first made the place and afterwards the people to live there, in the new creation he is first making the people and afterwards the place where they will live." (33)

"The relationship between Gen 2:8-17 and Gen 1:26-27 is significant. Gen 2:8-17 explains the relationship between "likeness" and "image" in the covenant relationship between man and God. Only when the father-son relationship is nurtured through worship, fellowship, and obedient love will humankind appropriately and properly reflect and represent to the world the kind of kingship and rule intrinsic to God himself. Kingship is effected through covenant relationship." (39)