The Edenic Covenant

STATEMENT OF USE: This blog contains condensed material from manuscripts owned and copyrighted by Ariel Ministries USA and is used with permission. The material referenced within is from Ariel’s Come and See series, and is available, along with fifty other texts, free of charge to anyone who desires to use them. If you haven’t already, please check them out here:

https://www.ariel.org/resources/come-and-see/studies?navid=2390956

It is my fervent hope that you will not stop with my blog but that you will take full advantage of the wealth of wisdom offered through the faithfulness of Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum, who is a teacher to the best of Biblical teachers! Please go to ariel.org for the complete and full teaching on The 8 Covenants of God.

As we last examined, a conditional covenant is a bilateral covenant, which in essence means that God provided a promise but the fulfillment of the promise was dependent upon the other party(s) agreement to and obedience with the terms of the agreement.  As Dr. Fruchtenbaum noted, it is characterized by the formula: “If you will, then I will”.  God promises to grant special blessings to man providing man fulfills certain conditions contained in the covenant. Man's failure to do so often results in punishment. The blessings are secured by obedience and man must meet his conditions before God will meet His.

Two of the eight covenants of the Bible are conditional: the Edenic Covenant and the Mosaic Covenant. Of the two conditional covenants, the first was made with Adam in Eden. The other exclusively with Israel. Let’s take a look at the first of two Conditional Covenants of the Bible-The Edenic Covenant.

Scripture Reference: Genesis 1:28-38

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so.

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

WHO WERE THE PARTICIPANTS? 

God and Adam. Adam represented the human race, thus his choices impacted all of humanity.

WHAT WERE THE PROVISIONS OF THE COVENANT?

1. The earth was created as a habitation of man. Man was told to populate the earth.
2. Man was told to subdue the earth (Gen. l:28b). Previously, authority over the earth had been given to Satan (Ezek. 28: ll-19). But when Satan fell, he lost his authority over this earth. That is the reason Genesis 1:2 describes the earth as being covered by water and darkness being over the face of the deep. Hence, God began to form and fashion the earth to make it habitable for man, and this time He would give man the authority over the earth. Man was to subdue it; he was to use the natural resources and energies of the earth that God had provided for him.
3. Man was given dominion over all living things (Gen.1:28c). The earlier provision gave man authority over the earth as far as non-living things were concerned. This provision extended man's authority over all living creatures. The entire animal kingdom on the earth, in the air, and in the sea was put under the authority of man. The first exercise of this authority was man's naming of the animals (Gen. 2:19-20).
4. The fourth provision concerned man's diet (Gen. 1:29-30; 2: 16). At this point man was to be a vegetarian. There is nothing in this covenant that allowed him to eat of the animal kingdom although he was to exercise authority over it. No blood of any kind was to be shed.
5. Man was to care for and to keep the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:15). Even in his unfallen state, work was part of the human plan. However, labor was easy and the land would produce easily; it was not toilsome.
6. Man was forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17a). This was the only commandment that said “no” in the Edenic Covenant. This was the one test to see how man would respond to the will of God; it was a test of the recognition of and the submission to the will of God.
7. The seventh provision contained a penalty for disobedience: spiritual death (Gen. 2:17b). This cannot refer to physical death because man did not die on the very day that he disobeyed the commandment.

WHAT IS A DISPENSATION?

In order to be valid, any attempt to depict or describe the Bible’s philosophy of history must contain the following six necessary elements:

• An ultimate purpose or goal for history toward the fulfillment of which all history moves
• The recognition of distinctions or things that differ in history
• A proper concept of the progress of revelation
• A unifying principle which ties the distinctions and progressive stages of revelation together and directs then toward the fulfillment of the purpose of history
• A valid explanation of why things have happened the way they have in the past, why things are the way they are today, and where things are going in the future, and
• Appropriate answers to mankind’s three basic questions: Where have we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?

Simply put, a very significant attempt to explain or set forth the Bible’s philosophy of history is known as Dispensationalism or Dispensational Theology, which can be defined as a system of theology which attempts to develop the Bible’s philosophy of history on the basis of the sovereign rule of God. It represents the entirety of Scripture as being covered by several dispensations of God’s rule.

In his teaching on the Covenants, Dr. Fruchtenbaum looks at the Covenants of God from a “Dispensational” view. In my years of Bible study, I heartily agree.

THE COVENANTS STATUS

From a dispensational view, the Edenic Covenant also describes an age or time on God’s sovereign plan of history known as The Dispensation or Age of Innocence.

Satan appeared in the Garden of Eden as a fallen creature, showing that man was not created in a perfect universe, for sin was already in existence. Although not yet existent in man, it was already present in Satan. The devil did his work of tempting man in the same three areas as set forth in I John 2:16.

The first phrase of Genesis 3:6: And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, corresponds to the first phrase of I John 2:16: the lust of the flesh .The second phrase of Genesis 3:6 and that it was a delight to the eyes, corresponds to the second phrase of I John 2: 16 “the lust of the eyes”. And the third phrase of Genesis 3:6: to be desired to make one wise, corresponds to the third phrase of I John 2: 1 and the “vainglory” [pride] of life.

Eve gave in to the temptation and disobeyed the one negative commandment. Adam recognized what had happened, but he still chose to join his wife in disobedience. Their first reaction was an attempt to hide from the presence of God, which only illustrated the truth of Genesis 2: 17. Man at that very moment died spiritually and could no longer share the same communion with God he had experienced before his disobedience. With that act, the Edenic Covenant, being conditional, came to an end.

In our next offering, we will look at the Mosaic Covenant, also known as the Age or Dispensation of Law.