Book Detail.
|
Author Last Name |
North |
Keywords |
1. Dominion theology. 2. Bible N.T. Matthew Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Economics—Religious aspects—Christianity. 4. Priorities (Christian theology) |
|
Book Title |
Priorities and Dominion |
Pages |
454 |
|
Subtitle |
An Economic Commentary on Matthew |
Hard/Soft Bound Versions |
N/A |
|
Subject (Series) |
Dominion Theology |
View Cover |
N/A |
|
Year of Publication |
1999 | ||
|
Edition |
1st |
Browser friendly version | |
|
Long Description (from the Introduction) |
Jesus made it clear that seeking God's kingdom is priority number one for the individual. Not every person knows this. Most people today and in the past have not known this. This does not mean that Jesus was wrong, that seeking the kingdom is not each man's top priority. It means only that most men are in rebellion against God. Evangelical Christians too often believe that God's top priority is the salvation of men. This is a man-centered viewpoint, a kind of baptized humanism for Christians. It makes them think that they are the center of God's concern. They are not. God is the center of God's concern. The universe is theocentric. If the salvation of men were God's primary concern, then He is surely a failure, for comparatively few men so far have been saved. The glory of God, which includes hell and the post-final judgment lake of fire (Rev. 20:15), is God's chief priority. The salvation of men is God's means of extending His kingdom in history, but building His kingdom, not the salvation of men, is God's top priority for man. Jesus defined men's personal salvation in terms of entering into the kingdom of God. This kingdom is spiritual because men enter it through the Holy Spirit. "Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). It is also eternal (Rev. 21; 22). It is also historical. As the parable of Lazarus and Dives indicates, men enter God's kingdom only in history (Luke 16). There is continuity between the historical and eternal aspects of God's kingdom. This continuity will be established for all to see at the Second Coming/general resurrection (I Cor. 15:40-50) and the final judgment which immediately follows: the corporate spiritual inheritance of the saints (I Cor. 15:51-57). There is also continuity personally: heavenly eternal rewards will be handed out in terms of a person's earthly productivity in building God's historical kingdom.
Finding and then building the kingdom of God in history is the central theme of the New Testament, culminating in the fulfillment of the New Heavens and New Earth (Rev. 21; 22). This theme is an extension to the gentile world of a commandment and promise of the Old Testament: the building of God's city, Zion. This theme is ultimately a recapitulation of the pre-Fall dominion covenant: "And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" (Gen. 1:26-28). Adam, as God's agent, was assigned this task representatively for all mankind. Through their adoption by God, God's people are commanded to extend His kingdom. God's kingdom is not limited to the church or the Christian family. It is all-encompassing. God is the creator. Everything that He created is part of His kingdom. To deny this is necessarily to affirm that Satan, through Adam's rebellion, possesses a legal claim to part of the creation. He does not have such a legally valid claim. Adam was merely God's steward, not the original owner. Adam could not forfeit to Satan what he did not own. God's kingdom is therefore co-extensive with the earth: every realm in which men work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). Wherever there is sin, there is an area fit for re-conquest.
Man's top priority is seeking, finding, entering, and building the kingdom of God, but a legitimate secondary priority is the accumulation of wealth, in history and eternity. "All these things" is a comprehensive promise. This is the reward to God's people for kingdom-building. As redeemed men build it, step by step, they are provided with additional capital by God. The same system of positive economic feedback that Moses announced to the Israelites also applies to the New Covenant: "But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day" (Deut. 8:18). "All these things" is the ultimate success indicator for the church in history: the spoils of a spiritual war and the fruits of the church's labors. The accumulation of wealth on a broad basis is a positive sanction of God's covenant. Rewards are designed to increase covenant-keeping men's faith in God's covenant. The compounding of wealth, including population, is a sign of God's covenantal presence, whenever this wealth is accompanied by faith in God. But compound growth becomes a snare and a delusion when it is stripped of its kingdom-building context. When men move from the kingdom of God to the kingdom of man, marked by a shift from theonomy to autonomy, their wealth testifies against them, and compound growth accumulates negative sanctions in history and eternity. The greatest Old Covenant model of this covenant-breaking autonomy is Egypt. The disinheritance of Egypt at the exodus involved a restitution payment for the enslavement of the Israelites.
The gospel of Matthew, written by a former tax collector, is dedicated to the theme of God's kingdom in history. The other gospels touch on the same theme, but this gospel makes it central. The movement from the kingdom of man to the kingdom of God was illustrated by Matthew's visible transfer of allegiance from Caesar to Christ. A symbol of this transfer of allegiance was Matthew's decision to leave the money table and join the disciples.(1) The kingdom of God is central to history, Matthew teaches. This means that the kingdom is in history, and it shapes history. It overcomes resistance in history. "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). Gates are defensive. Hell has gates. Satan's kingdom is on the defensive today. The gates of hell are historical, part of the historical conflict between good and evil. The conflict is now. The church will not batter down hell's gates in the nether world. There is no point of contact between heaven and hell beyond the grave; a great gulf separates them (Luke 16:26). So, the points of conflict are historical. The gates of hell must refer to the kingdom of Satan in history. The church is never said to have gates, but because of their pessimillennial eschatologies, millions of Christians have a mental image of a besieged church, whose gates cannot be battered down completely by Satan's agents. This outlook reverses the imagery in the text. The church is on the offensive in New Covenant history; Satan's forces are on the defensive. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church in history. This points inescapably to postmillennialism. More than the other gospels, Matthew's is explicitly postmillennial. That is because its theme is the kingdom of God. The kingdom parables of Matthew 13 assert historical continuity, meaning that there will be no Rapture into the clouds prior to the general resurrection and final judgment. The imagery of the mustard seed and the leaven (Matt. 13) indicates the growth of the kingdom: from a tiny seed to a tree, or the leavening of the world's dough. Both images are distinctly postmillennial: a world steadily transformed by a process of continuous growth. As the world is transformed by the gospel, the gates of hell are rolled back.
Matthew's gospel is the only gospel in which the Great Commission is announced (Matt. 28:18-20). This call to discipling the nations is comprehensive.(2) It is the New Covenant's application of the dominion covenant. I have called Genesis 1:26-28 a covenant. Why? Man here takes no covenantal oath to God. No negative sanctions are listed. This is because the covenant here begins with God. Man was not yet created. The members of the Godhead -- the language is plural -- agreed to make man in their image. There was hierarchy: man under God and the creation under man. There was a law involved: to multiply and subdue the earth. The sanctions were announced only after Adam was created: possession over everything except the forbidden tree, but death for the violation of this sacred boundary. There was an inheritance implied through multiplication: the whole earth subdued by Adam's heirs. This pre-Adamic covenant defines man and his relation to the creation. The other four covenants require some sort of self-maledictory oath between man and God. Man calls down God's negative sanctions, should he break the oath's terms. This was not true of the dominion covenant. It did not require an oath-bound ratification on man's part. God enumerated the sanctions on man's behalf: inherit the earth or lose your life. God spoke on behalf of Himself and man, thereby ratifying the covenant representatively. Mankind through Adam could break the specific terms of the Edenic covenant, and did, but there is no way that he can ever escape the general dominion covenant in history. Only in hell can covenant-breaking man escape it: the negative sanction of impotence. Through Adam's breaking of this covenant in Eden, mankind now faces death. The gospel of Jesus Christ comes with the offer of life. Men are to choose life. This requires each person's ratification of a new covenant: oath-bound subordination to God through His only-begotten son. This new covenant does not annul the original dominion impulse of the broken covenant. It reaffirms it in the Great Commission. The subduing of the earth must proceed corporately: the discipling of the nations. Nations must be formally brought under the terms of the New Covenant. This is achieved by the four oath-bound covenants: personal, ecclesiastical, familial, and civil.
This emphasis on the socially transforming effects of the gospel makes the gospel of Matthew an important document in presenting the legal basis of an explicitly Christian social theory. The author was a Jew. More important, he was a Levite. His name in the other gospels is identified as Levi (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27). He was probably a member of the priestly tribe. This is why the gospel of Matthew is the most Hebraic of the four gospels. It is more concerned than the others with the kingdom promises given to Israel that the church has now inherited (Matt. 21:43). This emphasis on the kingdom is why the book has such a strong emphasis on the continuity of God's Old Testament law. Jesus said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 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" (Matt. 5:17-18).(3) Matthew is the first book in the New Covenant. This is as it should be: its theme of judicial continuity between the two covenants is strongly emphasized. The book was written on the assumption that its readers would be familiar with the Old Covenant. The development of Christian social theory begins with the assumption of judicial continuity between the two covenants. Without the continuing judicial authority of the Old Covenant, it would not be possible to develop an explicitly Christian social theory or an explicitly Christian economics. The New Covenant does not abandon Old Covenant social law. On the contrary, it assumes that those sections of the law that were not uniquely tied to Mosaic Israel's seed laws and land laws are still in force. This is why a detailed understanding of Matthew is so important for the development of Christian economics. The Gospel of Matthew moves from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant by way of the transfer of the kingdom from national Israel to the church (Matt. 21:43).
There are three questions that every decision-maker should ask himself before establishing a plan of action:
If men as individuals do not get their priorities into conformity with God's priorities for them, then their efforts will produce inferior results. This is true of societies, too. Covenant-breaking men seek to build a kingdom on behalf of other gods. All other kingdoms must fail. "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure" (Dan. 2:44-45). God has established that His people shall inherit the earth.(4) To build on behalf of another god is to build as the Canaanites built: so that God's people might inherit the work of other men's hands (Deut. 6:10-11). This is why "all these things" shall be added unto His people -- not just in eternity but progressively in history.
This gospel is most obviously the transitional document between the Old Covenant and the New: the transfer of Israel's inheritance to the church (Matt. 21:43). As such, this gospel is crucial for our understanding of covenantal cause and effect in history. Christian economic theory must begin with the assumption of judicial continuity -- sovereignty, authority, law, sanctions, and inheritance -- between the two covenants. Without this continuity, Christian economics would be some baptized version of autonomy. It would be no more permanent than the minds of autonomous men. Matthew's gospel provides considerable information on the nature of covenantal continuity. The dominion covenant I see as undergirding all four oath-bound covenants. In the Old Covenant, it was more obviously familistic and tribal. In the New Covenant, it is more openly ecclesiastical. This is because the church is the new family of God. The gospel breaks apart the unanimous confession of the Mosaic family covenant (Matt. 10). But, ultimately, the dominion covenant defines man as God's agent in history who must subdue the earth representatively on God's behalf. The dominion covenant was sworn representatively by the persons of the Godhead on behalf of mankind: "Let us make man in our image." This was the original covenant -- prior to church, family, or State. Men may seek to substitute other gods, but in the final analysis, there are only two: God and Mammon. Footnotes: 1. See Chapter 21. 2. Kenneth L. Gentry, The Greatness of the Great Commission (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990). 3. Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (2nd ed.; Phillipsberg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, [1977] 1984), Part I. 4. Gary North, Inherit the Earth: Biblical Blueprints for Economics (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987). |
|
Inside Flap | |
|
Catalog Description |
Created By: arnold on 01/07/00 at 09:43 PM
