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Originally Posted by SemperFideles  Paul Manata responds: Quote: |
I saw Elnwood arguing from Jer 31:27-30 (roughly) and that is one of the verses I have responded to in my responses to credos. You can post my answer if you'd like.
| L. The Individualistic Nature of the New Covenant:
The argument based off this text from Jeremiah 31,
27 "Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. 28 And it shall come to pass that as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring harm, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, declares the LORD. 29 In those days they shall no longer say: "'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.' 30 But everyone shall die for his own sin. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.
Malone takes from this,
“When the New Covenant administration is examined by Baptists, they see ample evidence that the New Covenant does not include the organic idea in covenant membership in the same way the Abrahamic covenant did. Rather, they see a new individualistic element in the New Covenant administration that was not as patent in the Old Testament ‘covenants of promise.’ […]
The promise was that, in the days of the New Covenant, God would cease bringing generational covenantal curses upon men for the sins of their fathers as he did upon the members of Old Testament organic Israel. The link would be changed. Each would die for his own sin, not the sins of the father. According to O. Palmer Robertson, every heart in the New Covenant Israel will be individually changed and directly responsible to God. […]
In other words, although the Israel of God in the Old Testament included all naturally born children under the blessings and curses, the New Covenant ‘Israel of God’ only includes regenerate individuals in the covenant, not the organic seed. There is a heightened individualism in the New Covenant.”
My problems with the above argument are numerous:
1) Daniel Block has written what Tremper Longman has referred to the best book on the Old Testament; his commentary on Ezekiel. Block notes about Malone’s type of argument,
“For more than a century this chapter has provided the primary basis for the widely held notion that one - perhaps the most - important contribution made by Ezekiel to Israelite theology was his doctrine of individual responsibility. Prior to this time sin and judgment were supposed to have been dealt with by Yahweh on a corporate basis.”
So we can see that Malone’s interpretation is simply keeping in step with some standard views on the claim by Jehovah made in both Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It is not disputed that they are referring to the exact same proverb. Therefore, any answer applicable to Ezekiel is likewise applicable to Jeremiah as well. |
Here is where a major mistake is made. Jeremiah associates the removal of this concept with the New Covenant. The same language in 31:27-29 "Behold the days are coming ..." is in v. 31 "Behold, the days are coming ... when I will make a new covenant." Thus, the reason for this saying not being used is because of some fulfillment in the new covenant.
Even if we accept Block's intepretation, since it deals exclusively with Ezekiel, it is at best incomplete. His interpretation may be correct in its immediate context of why that saying is to be said no more in Israel, but he does not answer the question of why that proverb especially does not imply with the coming of the New Covenant.
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2) The credo Baptist who makes the argument that all people are now held responsible for their own sins (as the universal claim says, “the soul who sins shall die) and there is no more principle of children being punished for the sins of their fathers has a contradiction in his system if he holds to a covenant of works. All men still suffer, and are born with the guilt of, Adam’s sin. Even Christians. Our bodies still break down. We still sin. In fact, why would we accept Christ’s righteousness? Jehovah also states the if a man sins but his father (his own federal head) is righteous, the sinful son will still be punished (Eze. 18:5-13). Thus a total and complete abandonment of the traditional principle of federal headship theology cannot be accepted. It was also argued that corporate responsibility, correctly considered, was not the subject up for debate.
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In response, I don't think anyone dies without their own sin and goes to hell for Adam's sin. So there is no contradiction that people will be judged for their own sins, and not the federal head. The contrast being made is Old Covenant earthly punishment vs. New Covenant eschatological judgment. In the Old Covenant, entire families were stoned for sins of the fathers. Not so in the New Covenant.
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3) In 1 Corinthians 5 we note that the sin of one individual is counted as the entire congregation’s sin. If they do not take care of it, they will also be punished! In Titus 1:10 we note that entire families are destroyed because the heads of those families have accepted Judaizing teaching. And, in Matthew 10, we read that entire households and towns are destroyed because of the decision of at least one representative of that town.
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1 Cor. 5 doesn't say the whole congregation is guilty of that one person's sin. They are held accountable for being lax about confronting and dealing with that sin.
In Titus 1:10, it says the whole households were subverted. It says nothing of households being punished for the head of the household's sin.
The use of Matthew 10 proves too much. It is making an analogy to the day of judgment, and we all accept that final judgment is individual, not by town or family representative.
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4) The Baptist says that in the New Covenant people are responsible for their own self regarding salvation. But God has never punished a sinless person for the sins of another. That is, he has never sent anyone to hell who lived a sinless life just because their parent sinned (assuming that they didn’t already have Adam’s sin). The point in Ezekiel is that these people thought they had done nothing wrong. And so, ex hypothesis, the Baptist would have to say that God used to send people to hell for doing nothing wrong!
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Paul completely misunderstands. I'll say it again. New Covenant administration is a better picture of the eschatological judgment. Old Covenant is types and shadows. Old Covenant punished entire families for one sin -- not in terms of final judgment in hell, but physically.
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5) Lastly, since the proverb was to be said “no more,” meaning from that day foreword, then if the Baptist is correct that the exegetical intent is to say that the children of believers are no longer considered in the covenant until they personally profess faith, then why were they still included in the covenant for hundreds of years? Obviously no one interpreted Jehovah’s response to the proverb as saying that “people can only enter the covenant by way of profession of faith.”
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Paul is defining covenant in paedo-terms -- visible church, which is not the way a Baptist defines it. Profession of faith does not make one enter the new covenant. Regeneration does.
In general, I tire of Paul's argumentation because he generally takes a shotgun approach to arguing. That is, he fires off as many arguments as he can in one post, many of which are not very strong, but the post is so long that not very many people want to take the time respond to it, or if they do, he objects because they didn't answer the multitude of small points he includes. It's a great debate technique to overwhelm an opponent, and it makes him formidable in a debate, but it's not very good argumentation.