Christians and the Jewish nation before them are members of exclusive covenants evidenced at their inauguration when Abraham’s own beloved circumcised son Ishmael was excluded together with his offspring{160}. Yet Paul will have been aware of an inclusive covenant to which God was being faithful by which the likes of Ishmael and the righteous before him had been accepted on the basis of their “faith” through the merits of Christ’s faithfulness. This Universal Covenant of life is more explicitly referred to in the fourth chapter of Genesis to be considered in more detail in chapter six in the context of those who default from it; for it is a key to understanding the mystery of evil. Prior to “the Fall”, a short-lived implicit covenant was in place relating to God’s instruction to our first parents to make free use of all that had been provided for them in the Garden of Eden but not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is referred to by some as the “Covenant of Works” but really it is also a Covenant of Faith, for acceptance with God has never been on the basis of attaining a standard of worked merit but of the obedience of faith and remaining faithful. Justification will be dealt with in more detail in the next chapter but basically it consists of demonstrating that one is a valid participating member of a covenantal community such as the Church, or indeed the redeemable human race that benefits from the Atonement in the context of the eluded covenant being considered.
Covenantal Membership
Everyone in God’s covenants enters them by grace alone, i.e. divine favour and generosity not dependant on merit. Unmerited grace clearly applied to a Jewish baby born within the Abrahamic Covenant; equally to the Christian baby baptized by the Church and incorporated within the Covenant of Christ’s blood; likewise to the adult convert given faith to apprehend Christ{161} and receive Christian baptism; and the human baby, starting with Cain as the world’s first infant, freely incorporated within the Universal Covenant of life through the two-way age-enduring merits of Christ’s righteous act that universally nullifies Adam’s act of disobedience{162}. The issue then becomes how one retains the benefits of that covenant as opposed to defaulting. The answer is faith or faithfulness [same word in biblical Greek] evidenced by fruit. The Jew who turned from JHWE to idolatry defaults his covenantal privileges; those in Christ who fail to produce fruit may remain in the Church but will not participate in the marriage of the Lamb, for every branch in Christ that fails to bear fruit will be removed{163}; members of the human race who fail to produce any fruit in the form of compassionate love (agape) like Cain and the Matthew 25 “goats” remain on earth but become alienated from God’s loving care; they have a new master to look after their interests, and at least as far ahead as Scripture permits us to foresee will not be incorporated within God’s eternal Kingdom but will receive post-mortem punishment{164}.
Cain, Abel and what God required of them
The following verse from Genesis is unquestionably covenantal in form, though most theologians for the last two thousand years have chosen not to regard it as such:
If thou (Cain) doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, Sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him{165}
“Will you not be accepted?” could equally be translated “will your countenance not be lifted?” which is utilized by some versions of the Bible. The King James Version quoted above rightly understands “sin” to be referring to a person (the Sinful One), for he is lying or crouching (Hebrew: rabats) at the door and has a desire to control Cain. Sin per se could hardly be at the door in Cain’s case, it’s already in Cain’s heart and about to wreak havoc. Cain is described elsewhere as “of the evil one”, confirming that the Sinful One was indeed at the portal of his soul and was able to master Cain and thereby control him, in fact own him{166}. From the human perspective, that would not have been so if Cain had responded differently to the challenge JHWE presented to him in Gen4:7, so the verse effectively reflects a Universal Covenant for fallen humanity; for Abel was fallen but he was accepted. The focus of the Cain and Abel story which is drawn upon in the New Testament is not concerning Abel’s salvation but Cain’s reprobation (rejection), indicated by the vital yet typically glossed references to “this day” and “now” regarding the elder brother’s fate. The day he killed his brother he was cursed and entirely alienated from God and not before that day. When God told Cain to “do well”, He was not seeking perfection but to do what the young man intuitively knew to be right: offer like Abel the first fruits of his crop and certainly not go on to slaughter his innocent brother in cold blood. For no one is born devoid of at least one “talent” (the light of reason and a sense of justice) but some choose to bury it in the ground and they will be condemned{167}. Cain, an agricultural farmer was not expected to steal from his livestock farmer brother Abel to sacrifice an animal in offering for his sin, as some translations imply (e.g. Young’s Literal). Comparing Scripture with Scripture we see that Cain and his sacrifice were not accepted because his works were evil whilst his brother’s works were righteous{168}. That was because the one exercised faith and the other didn’t, for one was a child of God, the other as confirmed in later Scripture was or had become satanic. As second century Irenaeus had expressed the matter in this context: “It is the conscience of the offeror that sanctifies the sacrifice when (the conscience) is pure and thus moves God to accept the sacrifice as from a friend”{169}. Abel showed by his works and a good conscience that he had “faith” so was justified by that faith with reference to works (offering the best of his flock). Through the faithfulness of Christ (ek pisteos christou){170}, which some more recent theologians and Bible translators recognize needs to be distinguished from cognisant faith in Christ (pisteos en Christo){171}, expiation has been provided for the faults arising from human weakness for those who themselves seek to be faithful to God{172}. The understanding of some that Cain and Abel were expected to anticipate a future Sacrifice for sin by killing an animal is unsustainable; cultic sacrifices were not clearly established as a religious system until the Law of Moses. Paul, James and the writer to the Hebrews make it clear why Abraham had been counted as righteous, being a belief in the God he had encountered evidenced by obedience, in his case that he would be rewarded with a great family{173}. No one in the Old Testament is declared to be justified on the basis of offering an animal sacrifice, so Abel cannot be an exception. Abel exercised faith and produced fruit in the form of good works. Abel didn’t “get saved”, he remained accepted (justified) and was acknowledged as righteous within the Universal Covenant; Cain reprobated (became rejected) and was brand-marked for Satan, and as a warning to those who would cross him, but that was not at the point he failed to offer his first-fruit in sacrifice, for although God was not pleased with his offering, He still held out an olive branch. Rather he was called to account immediately he had killed his brother. The issue was never the brothers’ religious observance per se for as always God delights in compassion more than religious offerings as Jesus Himself affirmed{174}.
The Fall and the Flood
Along with what occurred at Eden, account needs to be taken of a related cosmic drama cryptically referred to in Genesis 6:1-2 which impacted upon humanity, but as with the elusive Universal Covenant, in accordance with God’s stratagem of progressive revelation it has not been taught or generally understood by the churches, even though the earliest Fathers refer to it{175}. Once clarified, our loving God’s decision to flood the earth, obliterate Sodom and Gomorrah and annihilate the men, women and children of the Canaanite territories will be better understood, indeed perceived to be essential. It is necessary to refer to the extra-biblical Book of Enoch as it throws considerable light on Gen6:1-2 and matters concerning judgement and the age to come. In recent times fragments of copies were found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is literature that was regarded as inspired and a genuine work of the patriarch by early Church Fathers such as Clement, Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine and Tertullian since it is directly quoted in the New Testament{176}. Tertullian specifically regarded Enoch as falling within the remit of 2Tim3:16 concerning “all Scripture” being inspired and useful. He believed the book had been rejected from the Jewish canon because it contained this prophecy pertaining to Christ:
And there was great joy amongst them and they blessed and glorified and extolled because the name of that Son of Man had been revealed to them. And He sat on the throne of His glory and the sum of judgement was given to the Son of Man and He caused the sinners to pass away and be destroyed from off the face of the earth, and those who have led the world astray{177}
But the more salient reason Enoch was excluded from the Old Testament canon, apart from that formulated by the Coptic Orthodox Church, was because of an unacceptable degree of variation in the manuscript copies available to the early Church councils that determined the composition of the biblical canon. Apart from being directly quoted in the Bible, this Scripture clarifies some otherwise obscure verses which themselves are quite important and cannot be properly understood by comparing canonical Scripture with Scripture. None more so than the opening of Genesis 6, vital to a rounded understanding of God’s nature and modus operandi, together with the respective culpability of the human and celestial agencies that contributed to the Fall and the Flood. The latter was another reason it was more conclusively rejected by the later Fathers who believed it did not place sufficient emphasis on man’s culpability for those cosmic disasters especially having endorsed Augustine’s austere take on the matter. It also contains certain prophecies regarding the Mystery of God{178} being outlined in this document that would not have remained such a mystery had the book been received within the canon and historically focused upon within the Church.
Enoch’s exclusion from the biblical canon will have been in accordance with God’s will, for if we do not accept that the early Church councils were infallibly guided in determining which of the alleged “gospels”, “epistles” and “revelations” were genuine then we cannot trust the Holy Scriptures at all. Researchers into the matter will note that an agreed canon was not properly settled until the late fourth century, and for some time thereafter very few Christians would possess a Bible, for before the invention of the printing press the complete manuscripts would have been rare and extortionately expensive. Much later the Protestant Reformers relegated seven books classified as deuterocanonical having been included in the Septuagint but not the Hebrew Bible; these have subsequently disappeared from most Protestant Bibles. Yet some of these books are referenced in New Testament Scripture and many were utilized as proof-texts in the writings of the Early Fathers.
There is another reason to believe Enoch was not intended for the Church throughout its history yet is Scripture intended for the final generation of Christians – that is the very opening verse:
The words of the blessing of Enoch, wherewith he blessed the elect and the righteous who will be living in the day of tribulation when all the wicked and godless are to be removed{179}
And at the end of Enoch there is a prophecy concerning the book itself and other books:
But when they write down truthfully all my words in their languages, and do not change or remove anything from my words but write them all down truthfully – all that I first testified concerning them; then I know another mystery, that books will be given to the righteous and the wise to become a cause of joy and uprightness and much wisdom. And to them shall the books be given, and they shall believe in them and rejoice over them, and then shall all the righteous who have learnt from them the ways of uprightness be recompensed{180}
The idea of books or scrolls being made widely available for distribution is a concept nowhere to be found in the canon of Scripture and was beyond human envisaging before the invention of the printing press. It cannot be referring to the propagation of the Protestant Bible in the Middle Ages, for the Reformers like the Catholic Church did not regard Enoch as canonical, apart from which Enoch’s prophecy pertains to the generation living at the time “when the wicked are to be removed from the earth” (opening verse). For there will be something quite unique about that final generation: unlike all Christians who have gone before them, they will not have visited Headquarters before the Lord comes to realize His Kingdom. As Peter indicates in his epistle{181}, those who have died will have had the opportunity to be acquainted and prepared for the next age whilst in heaven; not so those alive at His coming.
In terms of the Genesis story, the ultra-metaphorical reading employed by Augustine and many others has resulted in some essential principles and events being glossed. Clearly, he and his contemporaries were right to recognize that the creation story as presented in the Pentateuch was not intended to be a scientific account of the various creative processes, but when the Lord tells Cain “Now you are cursed” and Cain replies “from this day I will be hidden from your face”{182}, that has a theological significance which has been quite eluded. Christians affirm that human history has been tainted by the disobedience committed as an act of free will by Cain and Abel’s parents against their Creator; but there has been a tendency to understate the influence of the third player in this catastrophe, for Satan (the serpent) was its instigator rather than Eve{183} and this is reflected in the punishments. These are radically different in degree once the prepared remedy is applied, for it benefits the one guilty party at the expense of the other. The eternal Word’s incarnation as a man and His death on the cross would bring about the ultimate destruction of the one guilty party, whilst for the other it would result in forgiveness, salvation and ultimate theosis{184}.
Having created what we now know to be a staggeringly immense universe, the Lord through His Spirit prepared this pinprick within space we call earth to receive life. But not just any life; for He had determined to initiate within this perfectly suited physical environment a relationship with beings created to be both physical and spiritual in makeup; made according to His nature so that they themselves could come to share in His divinity{185} and support His activity by subduing the earth. From the outset, man was to act as God’s vice-regent, overseeing and caring for all that had been created on earth. Provided with an equal yet complementing helpmate, Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden to tend and care for it. The garden is presented as containing all the trees required for this first couple’s eternal sustenance. It also contained a tree with the ability to give them knowledge of good and evil, intended for their future participation in the divine life{186}. Meanwhile they were forbidden to touch it; but having been tempted by the devil to do so, these two children of God who were created innocent yet pliant disobeyed their Father and immediately lost their original state of righteousness. At that very moment they “died” just as foretold{187}. That death pertained to their relationship with God, whilst what had been a perfectly complementing union between man and woman became subject to tensions and marked by lust and domination. In terms of their morality, their demise had the effect of weakening the soul’s ability to master the latent tendencies of the body, for through a modification of the brain, the latter became subjugated to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for material goods and ostentatious pride. This is a triple concupiscence pertaining to “worldliness” as summed up by John:
All that is in the world: the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the ostentation of life is not of the Father but of the world{188}
Through Satan’s treachery and our first parents’ disobedience, man together with the whole visible creation became subject to physical decay and death, and by procreation the human body became a corrupting influence on the spirit that temporarily inhabits it; what Paul and Peter refer to as our earthly tent{189} or vessel{190}. However, just a few chapters into Genesis and already some traditional theological assumptions need to be challenged. Firstly, it is erroneous to intimate that the Fall led to “death of the human soul”, for that implies that the whole person including the human’s spirit had become alienated from God and no longer has any effectual enlightenment or spiritual capacity. The historical error of mainstream Christian theology since its systemization in Late Antiquity has been a failure to distinguish between disobedient Adam and his psychopathic eldest son. That was not the case amongst the earliest Fathers such as Irenaeus{191} and Origen{192} who classified fallen Adam with righteous Abel not Cain. Adam was the first man to be created; Cain the first to be born of woman; the one was the federal head of humanity and the progenitor of “the body of this death”, the other was the type of the damned, being those who through an act of free will leave the intuitive path of sound reason and deference to God’s still small voice speaking through the conscience “to walk in the way of darkness, and rejoice in evil and delight in the waywardness of the wicked, whose ways are perverse and devious”{193}. Sound reason, even the spiritual faculty of conscience will not instruct a man how to be a disciple of Christ - His demands go well beyond such faculties and require special revelation, spiritual empowerment and the means of sanctifying grace. But innate human reason, informed by conscience is effectual and normative regarding what is to be pursued and what is to be avoided in the cause of being humane, and that is the basis upon which everyman is judged, being without excuse if he has opposed and rejected the light that he has received{194}. Cain did just that, killing his innocent brother in cold blood and so was cursed, whilst Adam had never received such a curse. Cain became alienated from such light, Adam did not; Cain came under Satan’s mastery, Adam did not; Cain was a plant of the devil, Adam a lost child of God; Adam was dead in trespasses and sins, Cain twice dead and pulled up by the roots{195}. Adam experienced a moral dichotomy between the impulses of spirit and flesh{196}; Cain did not - both components being “dead” in his case. Adam typified those on a long and arduous path to theosis; Cain to those who become the children of hell{197}. The understanding has been that Abel was the first man to be saved; the reality is his brother was the first man to be damned, the latter also acknowledged by the earliest Christian writers. Nor would such an affirmation of man’s innate ability to walk uprightly, attend to morals or observe sound reason have appeared heretical to them, for they recognized that such is quite distinguishable from being soul-healed and raised to eternal life through an interior communion with Christ{198}, which is what the Bible actually means by “being saved”.
Why the Universal Covenant has been eluded
Theologians cannot rely on a single passage in Genesis but must compare Scripture with Scripture, and the concept of a Universal Covenant for fallen humanity implicit in the Cain and Abel story (explicit utilizing the Masoretic text) does not fit well with much else as it has been historically and universally interpreted ever since Christian doctrine was systematized. Moreover, the Greek Septuagint (LXX) renders the key verse about God’s warning to Cain differently and that is the version to which most of the apostles and the early Church referred. The Hebrew (Masoretic Text) is no less reliable but it was not utilized by the apostolic Church, the Greek language being lingua franca for the Roman Empire and therefore the Greco-Roman Church. It is therefore no surprise that the apostles do not make direct reference to Gen4:7 in this context whilst the early Fathers always quote from the LXX, which refers to Cain’s incorrect division of his offering and that he should “be at peace and rule over him”; the “him” presumably referring to the devil. Such obscurity will have been an intentional veiling on God’s part regarding an understanding of a Universal Covenant, yet it is not dependant on this verse alone but can be deduced from Cain’s punishment and curse in which he became excluded from the nature of the relationship with God that his brother, his fallen parents and Cain himself experienced before the fratricide{199}. But the principle reason for what in a dual sense{200} might be termed the Lost Covenant concerns the nature of the Bible itself. This divinely inspired library of books was never intended to be a comprehensive account of God’s creation, for example relatively little is disclosed about the angelic realm from which evil had sprung and with which mankind will one day participate; rather Scripture’s focus is the salvation history for the world centred on Christ and His peculiar peoples (the Jewish nation and the Church). Hence Abraham is a vastly more significant figure than Abel; both were representatives within covenants, but Abraham initiated the exclusive covenant by which God would work from within through an elect people to enlighten and reconcile the world to Himself. The inclusive covenant in which Abel was declared to be righteous and Cain defaulted does not have a direct role in that salvation story, firstly because it pertains to that which is intuitive, so is not dependant on special revelation, and secondly because individuals are not “saved” through it, i.e. they are not cleansed from sin and spiritually empowered to maintain in life the integrity of the intellectual vessel the soul currently inhabits{201}. The Universal Covenant determines a person’s post-mortem fate, but also prior to that his involvement or otherwise with Satan as an agent within God’s mysterious providential role for evil (chapter six). That is why the type of those rejected from it being Cain was brand-marked and protected rather than destroyed. These issues are, as it were, the unilluminated side of the revelation globe, pertaining to the final Mystery of God.
As a consequence, biblical theologians have for ever been attempting to fit three square pegs (soteriological categories) into two round holes (soteriological outcomes); hence the numerous, seemingly intractable tensions in Scripture typified by the “narrow way” leading to life that few will attain on the one hand and frequent intimations, not least by Paul, of God’s broader scale intentions to reconcile all redeemable humanity to Himself on the other. It is also to be observed that Adam had three sons as did our postdiluvian Patriarch Noah, and from these have sprung all humanity: Adam’s son Seth and Noah’s son Shem represent the elect line; Adam’s son Abel and Noah’s son Japheth the “righteous” within the Universal Covenant whilst Adam’s son Cain and Noah’s son Ham were the accursed defaulters albeit that only one of Ham’s sons was cursed (Canaan) as Ham had already received a blessing{202}. Once we arrive at the Abrahamic Covenant, Isaac represents the elect line resulting in Israel whilst Abraham’s other son Ishmael who was also blessed by God{203} and remained in His favour and care{204} was not elected to the exclusive Covenant of Promise. Yet such as he, representing the vast majority of humanity, remain within the inclusive Covenant of life from which Cain defaulted provided they do not follow in his way{205}. Such multi-dimensional effectual grace (innate and celestial) can only be distinguished and systemized within a sacramental and synergetic soteriological framework so it is no wonder that such a schema has yet to be established, for on the one hand it undermines some early (fourth/fifth century) Catholic biblical theological groundwork whilst on the other is incompatible with the Protestant conviction of total depravity, sola fide and sola gratia. The Reformed concept of “common grace” is not linked to the Atonement, does not pertain to the individual and is deemed ineffectual for forgiveness or the avoidance of perdition. Since Vatican II through the Spirit’s prompting the Catholic Church has effectively acknowledged a third soteriological category being the “people of good will” who do not find their way into the Church but will ultimately be accepted into God’s eternal Kingdom. What has been lacking for the last fifty years from the Catholic side is a workable biblical underpinning for such a proposition, for that cannot be provided without substantial doctrinal deconstruction involving contradicting earlier conciliar pronouncements that the Church deems to be immutable.
Even if the Genesis account of the Fall is taken allegorically one must take stock of the events and what they are intended to symbolize given that all the key players in the saga are often referred to in New Testament writing. Augustine’s analysis of our first parent’s disobedience and its consequences failed to distinguish between Adam and Cain’s transgression and their respective punishments, nor did it take on board the extenuations indicated in the Book of Enoch (expanding on Gen6:1,2) in spite of the fact that along with many of his contemporaries he had regarded it as genuine and inspired writing.
The origin of the soul
A creationist understanding of the soul’s origin{206} maintains that each person’s soul/spirit, i.e. that which is separated from the body at death, is created immediately by God and planted into the embryo procreated by the parents. Such has been the prevalent view within Eastern Orthodoxy and is also the official teaching of the Roman Church{207} albeit Augustine had wavered from it. Through original sin, the divinely created spirit finds itself within a morally sickly environment, or expressed another way is required to operate through an impure medium - the procreated body of death. Physiologically the physical and spiritual entities (body and soul/spirit) are in union, yet they have opposing moral impulses. Augustine, considered to be the first Christian anthropologist had started well, aptly applying the analogy “your body is your wife”: the couple were once in perfect harmony but following the Fall are in combat with one another. Paul however goes further: these two entities are influenced by separate and distinct laws or engrained principles; the body, being the corrupted medium through which the soul/spirit (Paul’s “inner man”) functions, h