For those who have been following the posts here about the implications of the Covenant of Noah, I find I am about to run out of track. Given the nature of this type of publishing, it would be difficult to proceed much farther. I would openly invite questions for the sake of clarification on things, but the most important thing you can do is take off on your own wings, as it were. The point is not to constrain your understanding, but to offer you my understanding to provoke your own sincere search for the truth.
Today I’m offering a sort of “workshop” to apply the theory. Let’s review key items of that theory:
- God revealed Himself within a particular culture matrix, which culture He fostered and developed Himself as the best setting for conveying truth on His terms, to a fallen world which no longer instinctively knew Him. That culture is labeled variously as Ancient Near Eastern (ANE), Hebraic, Semitic, etc.
- Modern Jewish culture is vastly different from the ancient form, having passed through the corrupting influence of Hellenism and the Greek philosophers. As early as Jesus’ time, it was already too far gone. Much of the conflict He had with Jewish leaders and scholars was because they failed to see their own Law of Moses through the unique epistemology of the ancient Hebrew intellectual climate.
- Modern Western Christianity has likewise bought into the Hellenistic rational assumptions about what man can know of God. This analytical bias is read back into the Bible. The entire frame of reference is built on the wrong foundation, and we would naturally expect most of the particulars to miss the mark, to one degree or another — not totally wrong, but structurally flawed. It may not be possible to reform the Western churches, but we are obliged to seek that unique spiritual logic by which the Bible is rightly understood.
- The most difficult part of this is realizing we have to dismiss just about the whole of mainstream organized Christian religion in order to reconstruct what it ought to have been. We cannot avoid being painted as radicals, extremists, and general nut-cases. We don’t become enemies, but it often feels that way gauging by their response to us. They aren’t evil, just woefully misguided, and in many ways an embarrassment to the Eternal Realm. They view us the same way.
- The ANE understanding of the Covenant of Noah is far more expansive than appears on the surface, as is typical of ANE assumptions. The modern Jewish scholarship appears to be correct in this, at least, listing Seven Noahic Laws which are reflected in the reasoning by the Early Church leaders (Acts 15). It is the Early Church who point out the Law of Moses was essentially closed by the Cross. Jesus became the entire sacrificial and ritual basis for approaching God, and His teaching corrects the false understanding of the social codes in the Law. His teaching indicates Moses was in some respects actually looser than was intended under Noah. We rightly view Moses as a subset, an example, a specific application of Noah within a given circumstance. Generally, when Israel/Judah was faithful to Moses, they were also faithful to Noah, and vice versa.
- The Laws of Noah allow for no exceptions for any nation. Governments either comply, or they do not. In standing before God as nations, there is one standard which applies equally to all mankind. This covenant includes established provisions for both defiance (curses) and obedience (blessings). Those provisions come to us as explaining the nature of the universe, in terms of moral obligations. As much as we may seek to understand the mechanisms by which the universe operates, it is not possible to gain a full grasp without seeking to know the moral nature of it. Humans, particularly as nations, need not have a spiritual awareness to understand and implement the basic provisions for gaining the best possible life on this earth.
- Those of us who possess a spiritual awareness are obliged to Noah as the symbolic manifestation of what it means to embrace God’s Spirit and all the obligations attached. For us, the ultimate truth will always remain above explanation, and everything concrete is at best a parable of those higher truths. Thus, we present the Laws of Noah as the markers to indicate the Spirit, as the gateway God granted for entry into the Spirit Realm. To awaken a human spirit remains entirely the prerogative of God Himself, but the best place to stand for seeking this is the repentance call under Noah. Christ is found in Noah.
Let us explore briefly an example of how we can apply this understanding to the situation before us in the world today. The conclusion will be startling.
Afghanistan is not a nation, but a geographical abstraction. It’s a country which includes numerous nations. By now you should realize the nations there adhere to a tribal structure, which is the fundamental requirement under Noah. Aside from our intervention, these tribes have generally experienced some tension and warfare as far back as anyone can find records. What laws exist are culturally based. Virtually the entire population of all tribes are some brand of Muslim.
It’s odd how the modern Western world finds that situation barbaric, since each modern nation hardly blinks at their own mass slaughters using weapons of mass destruction. We are blind to their essential liberty of spirit, and the broad willingness to keep what they have in preference to our Western moral and material decadence. What is most frightening to our minds is realizing they are far, far closer to Noah than any Western nation-state. The flaw, of course, would be their adherence to Islam.
Islam was founded by a very intelligent young fellow who traveled a good bit in the Middle East and Near East some six centuries after Christ. He brushed up against Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and a broad mixture of pagan religions, and appears to have read their sacred writings, observed their practices. His own people mostly served a pagan moon god. From this exposure, he developed a syncretic religion of his own. We should assume he sincerely believed what he taught, though we naturally discount some of the mythical claims of Islam regarding winged horses and Mohamed’s travel on them. What we should not discount is how very much it all reflects the ANE worldview. Arabs in general, and Muslim Arabs in particular, are culturally closer to the ANE than any mainstream branch of Judaism, in part because Mohamed rejected much of the latter’s Hellenism. Any critique of Islam based on Western intellectual and cultural assumptions is simply ludicrous.
By no means should we consider Islam a good implementation of Noah. In summary, it’s easy to see sharia courts are inhumane by God’s standard, a horrific extremist enforcement. However, we should realize it is yet much closer than any part of the Western world. While extreme, those courts are asserting fundamentally decent and just requirements. For example, demanding the burkha is patently silly. At the same time, modesty is certainly God’s command. The very concept of “modesty” is inherently relative, but even from a Noahic viewpoint, the burkha is extreme and unjustified, albeit fundamentally correct. Frankly, the Taleban are generally welcomed by everyone in Afghanistan except the hedonist thugs, who seek the most despicable libertine behavior for themselves, even as they are more oppressive and capricious than the Taleban.
We never forget God remains the Ultimate Sovereign, and we will often find His choices inscrutable. Barring some purpose and plan we cannot grasp, we are left with this conclusion: The Afghani Taleban are far more compliant with Noah than the US, or any Western allies. According to the standards of Noah’s Covenant, we should expect God to give the Taleban victory over US troops. This, of course, requires we understand military victory in ANE terms. It’s not a matter of who slaughters the most, but who is left standing on the battlefield. I predict, based on the Bible, the US will be forced to withdraw in disgrace, much as the Soviets before us, who had ten times our number of boots on the ground.
