Much modern interest in Noah and the Noahic flood has centred around the historicity of the event. Did it really occur? is the question. This has been a rather tedious and pointless pre-occupation. Insofar as the discussion has been within Jerusalem, the historicity of the Great Flood has never been questioned. Of course Noah and the Flood were real, historical, space-time events. They were so real that if you had have been there, you could have plucked a whisker from Noah's beard, and you could have rubbed your hand along the planking of the ark and received a splinter for your troubles and got your hand coated in pitch to boot.
Jerusalem, then, has been more focused upon finding corroborating evidence for a world-wide deluge which catastrophically reshaped the world, and probably the heavens as well. There is an abundance of such evidence to be found. But, within Jerusalem, the evidence corroborates, it does not prove or establish the truth of Scripture. Such is the true spiritual condition of the Believing Mind, which has come to accept that the Living God is the determiner and reference point of all truth.
But where the discussion has occurred within Athens, the historicity of the Great Flood has never been accepted—and never will be. It is excluded from the outset as being possible. Athens insists upon uniformitarianism—by which is meant that the world as it is now is the way it has always been. The search for origins and the study of beginnings must involve no more than a projection of the current knowledge of the world back in time. Even the theory of the “Big Bang”—a pathetic refuge for those who cannot find answers to the origin of the universe—has been developed on the basis of this backward looking ratiocination, moving from the present, reasoning backwards from effect to cause, assuming that the present represents comprehensive and uniform causality from the past.
This is a deeply religious position, and is pretty much universally held in Athens. The Unbelieving Mind of Athens is militantly closed to the possibility of the existence of the Living God; it cannot approach these matters with reasonableness or impartiality, for Athens stubbornly and inveterately assumes the Unbelieving Mind as the ultimate reality in the universe. It refuses to discuss anything with anyone—least of all with a Believer—unless the terms of discussion from the outset presuppose the Unbelieving Mind as the determiner of all truth. So, the Great Flood to the Unbelieving Mind is no more than a childish myth believed by the feeble-minded.
Thus, where the discussion about the historicity of the Great Flood has been intra Jerusalem and Athens it has been an utter and complete waste of time and effort. You simply do not cast pearls before swine. At Contra Celsum we are not interested in debating the historicity of Noah and the Great Flood with Athens. That debate is an Athenian device which requires that God and all His truth be subjected to, and authenticated by, the mind of Unbelieving Man. Which would be to say―it were clearly not true from the outset. We are simply not interested in defending the historicity of Noah and the Great Flood to Unbelievers using their methods and authorities which presuppose that it cannot possibly be true.
As a result of Jerusalem mistakenly wanting to “prove” to Athens that the Great Flood was an historical event, the real and substantial significance of Noah's Flood for the entire world has been generally lost or occluded.
But let us be clear--because Athenians are slow learners--we are not saying, as do so many false citizens of Jerusalem—fellow travellers who are wolves in sheep's clothing—that the biblical account of Noah and the Great Flood is symbolic and mythical; that it was never intended to be understood as an historical event, and that its real significance lies in the meanings and interpretations of the myths.
We most certainly assert the historicity of the Ark and the Flood. It is clearly literally and historically true because God tells us of the event and God does not lie. If God were not true, then nothing at all would have meaning. Clearly meaning does exist―we are presupposing the case as we write and you read―in which case we have already presupposed the existence and veracity of the Living God. God establishes our minds; our minds do not establish and authenticate God.
So, laying aside the sophisms and mental parlour tricks of Athens, let us return to the significance of the Flood.
God’s salvation of Noah and His subsequent covenant with Noah and his family is one of the most important passages of the Bible. The covenant God made with Noah still binds God to this day. In it we see something wonderful about God’s faithfulness to Himself, to His creation and to us.
We learn about God’s patience with sinners. We learn about judgment. We learn about God’s sovereign grace to sinners. We learn about God’s mercy in sending His servants to preach His Word that man may turn from his evil ways and live. We see God’s slowness to anger. We see His commitment to the world He has made, His love of the creation, and His faithfulness to it, despite the despoiling work of sinful men. We see how God’s covenant and plan of redemption extends to all of creation. We also learn about baptism for the first time.
All of these truths are repeated and expanded upon throughout Scripture. But we see them all displayed in “seed” form in this amazing period of Noah.
In this part of the Bible, the Lord gives us an overture to the entire epic and drama of redemption. Just as the composer of a great operatic score will use the overture to introduce all the themes of the great work that will follow, so Noah and God’s dealings with him and his family is an overture to everything that has happened since―and will happen in the future. The essence of these realities is found in God making a covenant with Noah. This is the first time in Scripture we read explicitly of God entering into a covenant with His people.
As someone once said, a covenant is a binding obligation by God to be and act in a certain way towards His people. His people are therefore obligated to respond and act in a certain way toward Him. As the Westminster Confession of Faith has it:
The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet the could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which He has been pleased to express by way of a covenant.God's covenants with man represent a wonderful condescension on the part of God to us. Amongst many other things, the successive covenants of God—all of which are part of one abiding covenant of grace—represent God's giving to us a heavenly lever which we can use to call upon God to be and act a certain way toward us. “Lord, even as You have said, and covenanted, now we plead with you to act . . .”
Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 7:1
In the terms of this great covenant with Noah (sometimes called the Noahic Covenant) we now stand. God still conditions and shapes His dealings with us and with our world in terms of this covenant. While the covenant was actually made with Noah and his family, we are heirs of it and it binds God to His people today―that is, to Jerusalem, the heavenly city. It binds God to act in certain defined ways toward His people. The rest of Scripture, from Noah onward, is the story of how God has kept Noah's covenant with us.
The world and all human experience was fundamentally altered at the Great Flood. Herein lies its significance to us. As we develop our views about the world and the course of mankind upon the earth, as we begin to add more furniture into the Christian Mind, we must ever do so through the filter and prism of Noah and the Great Flood.
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