Should People Fill the Earth, What We Believe, Part 21

The Value of Disagreement and Iron Sharpening Iron

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Ministry Introduction and the Purpose of the Conversation

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the Executive Director of Christian Podcast Community and Striving for Eternity. We are here to hopefully encourage you in a better understanding of God's Word.

I am joined by my host, Bud the Wiser. How are you, sir? Howdy. I'm good. That is good. We're going to do a little bit of a different episode than in our series we've been doing on what we believe. We've been discussing the systematic theology, basically, or this doctrinal statement at striving for eternity, going through it in a systematic way, looking at what we've said.

But one of the things that ended up happening, Bud, is you and I do a lot of talk before and after the shows, and we had said we should record this sometime because there's a lot of discussion that doesn't make it to the air.

That's true. It doesn't. And what we wanted to do for you folks is give you a little bit of a background because we were talking about the statement and all that's in that statement, everything that, what it is we believe, why we said what we said, what it means, what it doesn't mean, how this shows that other things are not true.

We've gone through that for weeks with you, but how do we come to that? What does the discussion sound like when you discuss these different things, debate these different things? How do you come about with it?

Bud and I were discussing one thing that Bud had said, hey, Andrew, I noticed this was missing in the statement. And I said, you're right. And we started getting into why. And I'll give you basically the reason why with part of it is I haven't done enough study in it to give an answer to some of the specifics.

There takes, with each of these things, a lot of study and discussion that goes into it. And what we wanted to do is give you kind of a behind-the-scenes episode. We're going to pull the veil back and say, this is what goes on between Bud and Andrew, what it looks like or sounds like when we start discussing theology and differences that we would have and different things to think about.

And so that is what's going to be for today on The Wrap Report. Before we get into that, let me just quickly get a word in from our sponsor so we can be have the discussion. That would be MyPillow. I encourage you guys to go out, check out MyPillow, go to MyPillow .com.

Use promo code SFE to get some of the best products, best slippers. I love their slippers. They have robes. They have sheets. They have towels. They have mattress toppers, which are great. Get the three-inch mattress topper, change your sleep.

MyPillow pillows, everything they make that I have found has been excellent quality made here in the USA. Go to MyPillow .com. Use promo code SFE. Okay, so Bud, I'm going to—this is, folks, this is free flow.

This is—there are no notes. This is just open. Yeah, neither of us have notes here. This was just a discussion that we started before the show that we previously recorded. And so, Bud, I'm going to let you start with the question that you had, and then we don't have to necessarily try to recreate our conversation, but we stopped it in the middle so that we can record this.

So we'll do as best we can to recreate and then continue. Yeah, we'll come back. So what this ties to is when you and I did the episode from the doctrinal statement on man, which it was paragraph two, where it was what God's intent was for the creation of man.

And it was obviously to glorify him, enjoy his fellowship, live in the will of God. When I had prepared for that, you and I, we don't really script these things beforehand. We were using that as a script, and we just kind of bounced back and forth as we're doing our conversation.

Well, the direction that I had notes on had to do with what is called the creation mandate, the dominion mandate, the cultural mandate. I mean, it goes by a number of different terms, which is from Genesis 1, 26, that I understand it as a Trinitarian dialogue, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion.

And it goes on and explains that. And in your statement, you didn't address that at all. Now that's not, I mean, it's not a problem one way or the other, because I think what you've got in the statement is more than sufficient, but this is kind of explicit.

And so we were talking about the issue of the cultural mandate, the dominion mandate and where you fall on it and where I fall on it. And I think we were probably in two different positions and that's okay.

So hopefully people will hear some gracious dialogue because you're not going to try and rip my throat out. Much of what a doctrinal statement is, is addressing things that you're trying to correct wrong views.

And I don't know that this is something where we end up seeing some wrong view or some unbiblical view here that would be an issue. The discussion we had was really, it came around the idea, Genesis 1, 28, God bless them and said to them, be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the living things that moves on the earth.

Now you had said that the command that we see here in the Hebrew, the word fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue and rule are all commands. They're imperatives in Hebrew. And so this command is reiterated to Noah.

Yeah. Genesis 9. Right. And so you had made the point that this is something that we see to us. Applies to us. Yes. To be fruitful. This is an area I have not done enough study in, but as we're going to discuss this and as we were discussing it before we recorded the last show, there's a lot of implications here.

And that was what I haven't studied out to say, okay, what are all the implications? How does this affect the perfections of God? And I don't see in either your view or my view, either one of them affecting where I could say, okay, this creates a different God.

You know, this changes the nature of God and therefore I can rule it out. So I could see either one. So the question is, do we have a command to be fruitful today? So what I had said to you, bud, was this, is that there's, we only see this command twice and there's something unique about the both times.

There were no other humans on earth, right? Adam and Eve were the only humans when this command was given. And we end up seeing that with Noah, it was his family. He was the only ones at that time. So in both cases, it was a time where God was saying the earth needed to be filled up again.

And so is it a command to us? And that became the question, right? Is it a command to us to be fruitful and multiply? And my thing that I immediately thought of is, okay, if this is a command, then there's certain people who just physically cannot fulfill this command.

There's certain people who cannot have children. There's certain people who are not married. Would they be in disobedience to this command then? Granted, this almost sounds, I'm making this argument, yet I know when I think through this, I know how it's sounding.

It sounds very much like the argument that is made against, well, first made against Augustine. Would God give a command, like, be holy that we can't keep? Right? So the last episode we did, we didn't touch on, you know, the whole debate there that Augustus had with the whole thing of God commands us to be holy, therefore they would say that, well, we don't have a sin nature because we have to be, have the ability to be holy, because God wouldn't give a command that he doesn't allow us to keep.

And we would say, no, God gives us that standard. So I recognize, I'm saying that I recognize that I sound that way. And I would disagree with that in the area of sin nature. But now, here's the thing though.

I mean, the fruitful and multiplier, that's sort of secondary because you go back to Genesis 126, which is where this is the Trinity determining, decreeing how they're going to make man or how man is going to be created, what he is to be responsible for.

This is before Adam. I mean, it says, then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion. So implicit in that is the fruitful and multiply. Now the issue with the command to Adam, this is prior to the fall.

The issue with the command repeated to Noah is post-fall. So the issue that you're suggesting, which is legitimate, there are people who cannot be fruitful and multiply. Now there are two conditions that contribute to that in my view.

The first and most important being sovereignty of God. His providence is so orchestrated that they're unable to do that. Now, maybe they're not willfully trying to disobey a command to be fruitful and multiply.

It may not be a willful sin. It may be a condition by virtue of sovereignty. They're not able to, however, it is also a condition as a result of the fall. This is all tied into the curse and the implications of sin, just like sickness and death, obviously being the big thing.

So I kind of would tear that secondarily and say, no, the big issue is we are to have dominion. And that was a decree of God before man was created. I mean, at verse 26, here's what the Trinity says we're going to do.

And then verse 27, then he does it. So I think the dominion mandate is really the bigger picture. We mentioned this in the pre-recording, but, and this is where your covenantalism and my dispensationalism kind of differ, right?

And so you, and you had said something really good that I've said for years, I want you to try to repeat it, you know, as far as reformed and Calvinism and dispensationalism. And this is not an attack.

This is just recognizing theological distinction. So you can be a Calvinist and that means you're soteriologically reformed, but it doesn't mean you're fully reformed. You just understand salvation because you're grasping the doctrines of grace.

And my argument is that you can't call yourself a reformed dispensational, which there are a lot of people that do that. And I think that they're doing that on the basis of they understand Calvinism, they understand doctrines of grace, and therefore they call themselves a reformed dispensational.

Those two things don't go together. They're contrary. So you're not reformed just because you understand the doctrines of grace. If you're dispensational, you're not reformed in a full orbed meaning of what reformed theology means, which I would argue would be Calvinism, certainly big deal, covenantal theology, second thing and confessionalism.

I think those are the three big C's that define what reformed truly means in its fullest sense. Now, praise God that they're dispensationals, have come out of dispensationalism. So praise God that they understand.

There are many of them who understand doctrines of grace. That's remarkable. But the implications of sovereignty don't stop with salvation. The implications of sovereignty flow all the way through. And so when you go back and look at scripture and you look at this dominion mandate, ooh, yeah, that's a sovereign determination and decree of God.

And the church at large, whether it be dispensational or whether it even be reformed because any camp is going to be guilty of kind of neglecting this command of dominion. And there are a number of elements that contribute to that.

I think pietism is certainly the most egregious error that causes the church to kind of retreat from the obligation to create culture and to create it according to the law and principles and norms of what God's revealed in this word.

I'll agree and disagree with some of even some of the terminologies, but terminology is important and we have to deal with this. Even in the term you used, reformed or covenantal, see, historically, and I've said this many times, it gets me in trouble.

I realize it. But like, I don't want to say Calvinism, even the way you're using Calvinism, you're using it broader. Calvinism, because Calvin was more than just the doctrine of salvation. Oh, exactly.

Precisely. And so I like the term doctrines of grace because doctrines of grace is being very specific to the doctrine of soteriology study of salvation. So doctrines of grace. So you can have reformed people and dispensational people that hold to the doctrines of grace.

Right. Right. Okay. Historically, covenant theology was actually Roman Catholicism. What came out of the Reformation was reformed theology, which reformed covenant theology. They had that basis that came from the Catholic Church in some of that covenantal way of viewing things.

They then reformed it. And that becomes really important. The reason it becomes important is as we look at it, we end up seeing, okay, here we are, and we have this change in the doctrine, this change in the system of how we're going to interpret.

Where people get upset with me when I say this, this is not a dig on those that would hold to reform theology or what so many would call covenant theology. I'm not saying it's Roman Catholic, but historically we have to understand where it came from.

There was a view of interpreting scripture that the Catholic Church had that men like Luther still had a tie to. People still had ties to that. Now does that make it wrong? No. Because there's many things the Catholic Church taught that was still right.

But the reason why I wouldn't say I believe in covenant theology is because historically that was Roman Catholic. It's reformed theology that I would say that people that say they're covenantal or covenant theologians, they're really reformed theologians.

So I'm being a little bit more precise with it. So I don't want to use Calvinism because Calvinism is broader. So if you said, well, I believe in reformed theology, that would be taking into account the views of the covenants the way that most would say their covenant theology would be.

And so the terms are really, they're not precise enough. And I think that's why people came up with the idea of doctrines of grace, to limit it to the area of the salvation and what's happening with it.

Well, I don't think I would argue with any of that really, because the whole intent of the reformers, if you're using that term properly, Luther, you mentioned, was to reform the Roman Catholic Church.

Obviously, that was not what the Lord had intended when he precipitated by providence all those events that happened in the 16th century. They ended up rescuing the gospel. They ended up rescuing Sola Scriptura.

But the intent that they had was to reform the church, to bring it back in line with Scripture, to put tradition, which tradition is a good thing, but to put tradition in its proper place and subjection under Scripture.

Now, the church would have none of that. And so you see the protest, the Protestant movement emerge, and it splits off. Praise God for that. So I wouldn't argue with that, because if you go and you pull down the catechism of the Catholic Church and you read their theology proper, we agree with it.

I mean, they have many of the same core fundamental doctrines, particularly with theology proper, the nature of God, who is God. Now, they go astray in a lot of other places that makes them apostate, in my view.

But I don't think I'd argue on your point there. We end up seeing a difference here, I think, between the views, right? You're going to approach this more from this view of the covenants, right, and the mandate.

I would end up approaching this as saying, I can see how God works. And I'm going to say He works through covenants, because I would argue that each dispensation is a covenant. So when people say, well, as a dispensationalist, I'm not covenantal, what do you mean by that?

Because I—. Yeah, you can't get around the covenant, this is how God operates with man. I would actually say I'm more covenantal, because I see all the covenants, but I don't just see two, right? But I look at each of these covenants, and I'm going to say, well, God is working differently with people.

So I would say that in Adam's covenant, he's saying to Adam, be fruitful and multiply. Then when he wipes out humanity, he says to Noah, here you go. But we don't see that repeated. So is it a command for us today to fill the earth?

This is somewhere, what I was saying to you, Bud, is I'm not saying it's not. I haven't studied it enough yet, and to be honest with you, I guess this is the way history has proven out, is most of the time what happens is because of heresy, people study things.

It's really interesting, in history, when you study the history of theology, you realize that the reason we have much of the theology we've developed is because of heresy, because it's answering heresy, and that's why the doctrinal statement we write is answering false things that are out there.

This is, I don't know of a false thing that has grown out of it. Well, I don't know that it's a false thing, but there is a movement within Christianity where they try to have as many children as they can under this command to fill the earth, and so you have families that have 20 kids.

There are people like that. Is that wrong? See, I can't say it's wrong, so there's never been a push to study it. Go consider what's happening in Acts 2. You've got Peter, he's preaching, you know, and the men of Israel, the audience that he's preaching to, these are Jews who, by the way, had all been circumcised.

Why are you going to bring that subject up? That hurts. Well, I'm just saying, yeah. Peter preaches, he said, "...let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.".

Now when they, the Jews in the listening audience, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, "...brothers, what shall we do?". And Peter said to them, "...repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to himself.". So what you see there is the implication of generation. Now it's not explicitly saying, be fruitful and multiply.

It's acknowledging generational blessing. So the promise is what? Well, he's talking here about the promise of the new covenant. Well, what does this tie right back to? It ties right back to the Abrahamic covenant.

All families of the earth, all nations will be blessed in you. So you've got this implication of how God is working providentially and redemptively through history, that he does it generationally, that his promise is steadfast and that he follows through with it.

This is Genesis 3 .15, if you understand and follow, what is that seed? What's that mean? And Paul, of course, explains it for us helpfully, but that seed is Christ. And so he is bringing that to fruition.

And it's how we would understand that Old Testament saints were saved in the very same way that New Testament or post-New Testament saints are. It's by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone.

They were looking forward to the promise. We're looking back to its fulfillment. So I see the implications of dominion and generation in places like this. And that's the first and foremost one that I'm thinking of, Peter's sermon there at Pentecost, because this is right after the, technically the inception of the New Testament church.

I would argue covenantally that there was a change. I see the New Covenant different than the Old Testament covenants. Well, wait, let me ask you something about Revelation. Is it progressive? I would say yes.

But the covenants won't be? They are, but I think that the New Covenant is individual versus familial. Really? Then why did Christ say in the Great Commission, go disciple the nations? In what passage of scripture do you find that?

In the Great Commission, Matthew 28. It doesn't say that in Matthew 28. It says that in Mark 16, and I don't think Mark 16 is scripture. No, it does. It says go and make disciples. Of what? Well, of the nations.

Right, of the nations. Yeah, so that would mean. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in Trinitarian baptism and teaching them to observe all I've commanded. So it should be translated.

The word in Greek there for go. But it doesn't say go make disciples of all individuals. That would be universalism or presumptive universalism. If you look at it, the way it should be translated is as you go or going, make disciples.

So it's. I agree with that. Right. The focus is everywhere in the world where you go, you should be making disciples. It doesn't mean you make a disciple of every human being. It means. He's explicit.

As you're going. Yeah. We believe in verbal plenary and inspirational scripture. The words matter. Well, they do. And that's why if you go back. Of all nations. So let's look at the New Covenant, right?

What is the New Covenant? So you look at the other covenants and you will see familial parts to the covenant that affect the family. But in the New Covenant, Ezekiel 36, 25 following, Jeremiah, I think it's 19 and following.

But when you look at the New Covenant, it's individual. The spirit will dwell you, not your family. So when you get saved, your family doesn't get saved. And so the New Covenant, I think, is individual.

So covenantally, I'm looking at it. So when Paul talks about, and then all Israel will be saved. Well, are you saying that that's referring to Israel? The nation? I'm asking you. I would say that's Israel, the nation.

And so there, so there. So you're just contradicting yourself. No, no, no. Because I would say that's future and that there'll be another covenant then that goes back to... There's going to be another covenant?

Where do you get that in Scripture? Oh, I think there'll probably be another covenant during the millennium. But see, you don't believe in a millennium. Oh, I do believe in a millennium. You just agree?

I believe that we're in it now. I'm not going to take one chapter, one verse out of one chapter in all of Scripture and create an eschatology out of it. Well, but I think you're doing that with fulfill the earth.

No, I'm saying this is the command of God. This was the intent when we're talking about why did God make man? He tells us right there in Genesis 1 26. We're going to be his image bearers, which ties also to the law of God.

You shall not make any... Well, why should you not make idols? Because you're the image bearer of God. He's made you to be the image. You reflect him. Now, the fall affects all that, and we've talked about that.

The fall affects your ability to rightly image God. But what's happening in Christ? What's the point of our salvation? Well, it's to restore to us the image of Christ. We're being conformed to his image.

Why? Because he's the perfect image of God. He's back to what Adam forfeited by sin. So I'm saying that Genesis 1 26 precedes the creation of man, and this was God's intent. Let them have dominion. The effect of that dominion necessarily means he's going to command you be fruitful and multiply.

The fall is going to occur, which will impact that, and his curse is going to ensue, which also impacts that. But all of this is being restored in Christ, and ultimately Christ prevails. So I don't think that dominion mandate goes away, and in fact, I see a clear connection between the dominion mandate in Genesis 1 26 and Matthew 28, where Christ is issuing the Great Commission, because he's talking about all nations.

Yeah, but I think the thing is that I don't see that the covenants in the New Covenant has to apply to families. No, it applies not just to families, it applies to nations. Christ is saying this after the Lord's Supper, after the New Covenant in my blood.

It affects nations, because here's the difference, right? It's no longer a nation of Israel, it's now to the nations, but it's still an individual covenant, where the other covenant was back to what we talked about in the last episode, was federal headship, right?

And so each of the covenants had that federal headship concept to it, where the father would do something. I mean, this is why the men were circumcised, and the men were circumcised on behalf of man. Why was it that Moses had to circumcise his children?

That was because as men, they were representing their families. So you have this notion of the federal headship that was in those covenants, but in the New Covenant that we see, where the Holy Spirit indwells us personally, it ends up being that we don't have that ability, I don't think, to say, well, this applies to the family.

So you're saying that the New Covenant is more restrictive than what the covenant with Abraham was? No, it's wider in the sense that it goes to all the nations, but part of it is individual. Oh, I'm not, yeah, I absolutely agree.

We no longer need a priest, the Holy Spirit will indwell us. But it doesn't stop with the individual. Yeah, so it goes to the nations, it's now open, and it's not just a nation of Israel, but it's a covenant to all the nations.

But it doesn't mean that it applies to all the nations in the way of, okay, now all people are going to be saved. Oh, no, we're not arguing that at all. Yeah. So when I'm saying that it's individual, I'm talking specifically with some of the commands of the Holy Spirit indwelling, because that's a big thing of what we look forward to is we don't need a priesthood to tell us God's Word, he will indwell us and tell him himself.

I think that the shift between Old and New Testament is a radical one, because prior to that, their sacrifices were not what's atoning for sin. They did that looking forward to what we look back to. And so at the cross—and we both agree with this—at the cross, all sin was paid.

At the cross, right? When I look at this, though, I understand what you're saying as far as the mandate to have dominion over the earth. I'm just not sure that the command to fill the earth, we only see that twice in history, and both times there was something unique going on there.

And so is that a command to you and I to fill the earth, to have—and then I guess then the question becomes, to define that, how do we fill the earth? Is it having two children, five children, as many children as we possibly can?

Yeah, and I'm not—I mean, I see that really as a lesser issue, and necessarily so because of the implications of the fall and the curse and sin that does not thwart the intent of God to create His image-bearers who would have dominion over His creation, His very good creation.

It doesn't thwart that. He's not going to let sin prevail. Christ certainly is the answer for that. So the dominion mandate still stands, and that is followed through all of the covenants. I think it's implicit there.

The most cited Old Testament scripture in the New Testament is Psalm 110, verse 1, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Okay, there are implications there that have to do with dominion, because what—God always uses means.

What are the means He's using in the world? He used Israel. Now He's using the church, pillar and buttress of truth. So will His enemies be made His footstool? Certainly. It's all over the New Testament.

I think it's—you can look it up. You're on Logos. You can see how many times. I know that that's a frequent citation in the New Testament of the Old. So there are covenant implications to that, because what God—the Trinitarian decree from before the foundation of the world, the Trinitarian decree was this is what man is going to do.

This is my good creation. Now sin—the world is cursed as well. The implications of sin are not merely with man. It's also with the creation. And that dominion mandate precedes even His command to Adam and Eve, or to Adam, to be fruitful and multiply.

It comes before that. This is a preface. This is like a big umbrella objective that God has established for man, and I think Christ is repeating that when He gets to the Great Commission, which we would deny universalism.

It's not going to be every individual, although we do acknowledge that it is individual, but it is not only individual, because He tells us there to go to the nations, make disciples of them. Well, I think that that opens it up to where He's saying He's no longer going to focus just on Israel.

There we're agreeing, because this covenant is no longer—the new covenant is no longer just with a nation of Israel. It's broader than that, and now it reaches the world. This is really funny. You talked about progressive revelation, and I had been in a class where the professor explained progressive revelation, but the progression of covenants, and how you have from Adam and Eve, you have the individual to family, to nation, to nations, to universe, with the belief of new heavens, new earth, and this progression.

It was really interesting, because I ended up taking that, and I ended up drawing that into a chart, right, and showing the progressive revelation and progressive covenants. It was really kind of a neat thing when all of a sudden I'm sitting in a class on the history of theology that my professor, Dr. Burggraf, had done, because I asked him to speak at a conference on that topic, because he's great in those two areas, theology and history.

He shows how they come together really well. He really blends those together. So he did this one lecture at a conference where I was running, and he ended up doing a whole semester, created a whole semester curriculum on the history of theology, going through history and theology and how they developed.

It was really neat, because all of a sudden I'm sitting in that class, and all of a sudden I see my own charts being used. And the funny thing is, he forgot where he got it from, which is totally fine.

He's like, one of my students gave me You didn't even get a footnote? No. He goes, one of my students gave this to me. And I was like, hey, cool, now I know who that student is. I never said anything to him.

But yeah, I do agree with you. There is a widening, I think, of each covenant to a broader and broader audience. It's a thing where I know that I had been taught, both at church and in seminary, that the fill-the-earth mandate was only for Adam and Noah.

We always have to do this, is say, okay, this is what I was taught. So I've kind of held to that, not for any other reason than this is what I was taught. But I mean, even as you and I are discussing, you're hearing, I'm not holding it to it firmly because I haven't studied it.

That's the difference, right? Sure. If I haven't studied it, I can't say I believe this. But this is where we all start with. We all start with presuppositions that we get from kind of where we're raised, and now we've got to question those in Scripture.

Studying the Command to Fill the Earth and the Dominion Mandate

Yeah, and you need to do that. I'm not saying you need to do that, but a believer needs to, if they run into something that's kind of, ooh, I've never heard that before, and if it sort of piques your interest, you need to go do the diligent study to determine.

And the basis of it is, can you make this argument from Scripture? I don't care if it's in Calvin's Institutes. Can I make his argument from Scripture, which, of course, in the Institutes he's doing, largely.

But you always come back to Scripture, you do the Berean thing. The implication, I think, there's some profound implications to what Peter answers those Jewish believers in Acts 2. This promise is for you and your children.

At a minimum, it indicates that that covenant promise is consistent with how God has providentially used the means of his covenant through history. It's done generationally. And then the Great Commission ties into that with all the nations.

And what is it pointing to? Well, yes, it is pointing to a new earth, a new heaven in which righteousness reigns. God comes to us. The other thing that is concerning, and I think there's a vivid example of it in the last two years with regards to the issue of those who can be Calvinists, they understand something about soteriological sovereignty, but they don't see the implications of sovereignty elsewhere.