The Serpent's subtle subversion of sacramental significance

E. Rice here weighing-in after 2 days of eating dried 'cots, reading Vos, and fellowshiping with the Wassells, Shane, and Alex, and looking forward to seeing JP next weekend! You guys are such an encouragement to me for many, many reasons but right now especially because your lives show a response to the gospel that is worthy of the gospel. An unending source of discouragement for me is the unbelief and pathetic responses of so many family, friends, acquaintences in and out of the church who have heard the gospel so clearly yet remain uncommitted to Christ, while at the same being sold-out for worldly pursuits.

Today's post brings up some ideas that Vos presents in the ch. 3 of Biblical Theology covering Pre-redemptive Special Revelation. The first two of four principles that Vos discusses in the chapter are in regards to the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Vos puts forth the idea that the trees have sacramental significance; they are "prefigurations coveying assurance concerning the future realization of the things symbolized." The tree of life symbolizes the principle of life, with the lesson being that "life comes from God, that for man it consists in nearness to God, that it is the central concern of God's fellowship with man to impart this." The tree of knowledge of good and evil was established by God to eventually communicate knowledge of good and evil to man.

Prior to reading this book it has been becoming increasingly clear to me that the Garden and Heaven are not the same thing. I am well aware that in heaven swords will be bent to plowshares and pruning hooks, but to say heaven is a return to the Garden is just plain wrong (and Jehovah's Witness-like)! The most basic differences between heaven and the garden is that the garden is not a permanent dwelling place of God, and the garden is a place of testing. It will be impossible to sin again upon entering heaven; the garden was not heaven, but more like an entrance place into heaven.

Adam was created into an earthly existance with an earthly task which he was to complete prior to entering into a spiritual exsistence in the higher sphere of heaven. We are correct and helpful in reminding one another that God has planned redemption since eternity past, but a more basic truth we often miss is that God has always planned to bring man into a state of everlasting blessedness. Without sin there would be no redemption, but sin is but one of two paths Adam could have taken to gain eternal, personal attachment to God. God is not dependent on man to sin in order to accomplish that plan. The wonder of the Gospel is that following the failure of Adam to keep the covenant of works, God re-extends the reward of life to Adam on the basis of grace!!! God's plan to impart life is not thwarted by sin.

This is what covenant theologians are getting at when they speak of Adam's "probation." The garden was a place of testing. God gave Adam a task: to not eat of the tree of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That is not a picture of heaven. Were Adam to stand through this time of testing, the reward would have been eternal life. The tree of life would have been the sacramental means of communicating that life. In his failure to meet God's demands, Adam's eating of the fruit from the tree of good and evil indicates he would also eat of the tree of life, and reveals that he would rather have life without God. That is so wicked, and completely rediculous, because life consists of nearness to God.

The title of this post is owing to the serpent's actions in deceiving Eve, and Adam, into eating from the tree of knowledge of good-and-evil. The serpent's agenda was to convince them that God was bad, and that the serpent has their best interests in mind. Obviously, the opposite is true: God was testing them prior to confirming them in glory, while the serpent was tempting them in order to ensure their ruin.

What is important to see, is that God's prohibition from eating of the tree does not mean that He was also prohibiting the knowledge of good-and-evil. It is not necessary to commit evil in order to be enlightened! Vos writes,

"Man was to attain something he had not attained before. He as to learn the good in its clear oppostion to the evil, and the evil in its clear opposition to the good. Thus it will become plain how he could attain this by taking either fork in the probation-choice. Had he stood, then the contrast between good and evil would have been vividly present in his mind: the good and evil he would have known from the new illumination his mind would have received through the crisis of temptation in which the two collided. "

The serpent told them that they had to eat from the tree to receive knowledge. He placed envy in their hearts for what God had and was holding from them. Vos writes, "(the serpent said) the tree has in itself, magically, the power of conferring knowledge of good an evil. This lowers the plane of the whole transaction religious and moral to the pagan-magical sphere."

The trees, set up by God, were intended to point to the fact that He alone is the source of life and knowledge. The serpent convinced man that they could be like God through receiving from the fruit of the tree. The serpent distorted the sacramental significance of the trees and ascribed to them power that belongs to God alone.

The parallels are just jumping out at me with the continued distortion of the OT and NT sacraments all down through history. I will save this for another time, and invite you all to weigh in as well.