The Noahic Covenant

The Noahic covenant is the arrangement that God set forth to Noah and his sons, which applies to all human beings thereafter. We find it in Genesis 8:20-9:17. As with the other covenants between God and man, this is not a mere contract. God did not negotiate it. He established it (see Gen. 9:9, 12, 17). That means that its terms are not up for debate. This is as true about its imperatives as those in the Ten Commandments. It is all to be observed and obeyed.

Yet there is something more complex here than in the other biblical covenants. At stake are matters of both the gospel and ethics. Since we are very selective creatures, among the reasons we speak past each other is that we have one interest and not another. Yet it is precisely the meaning carried by the “uninteresting” issue—its terms and categories—that prevents us from charitably hearing the other position. The Noahic covenant comes packed with this potential, since the very nature of this arrangement given by God is multifaceted and in such a short narrative space. 

The Question of Overlap Between Creation and Redemption

We might arrive at our first difficulty by asking whether the Noahic covenant is part of the covenant of grace. Reformed theologians have typically said no, though some have seen special grace as a more dominant note.1 For most, what is prominent seems to be the reaffirmation of the creational covenant with Adam, while others see the elements of grace in the sacrifice and Noah being in the godly line. Most see both going on, and so they reason that, though it does not follow the Abrahamic, we must still consider all those who believed before Abraham as being grafted into that same covenant. It may be the ultimate case of being “grandfathered in.” 

There are five basic reasons that the Covenant to Noah concerns primarily creational good, and only secondarily particular and saving grace.

First, the plain fact that Noah was the first man of the human race following the Flood, there being no other survivors but those after his seed—consequently, the members are simply everyone in Noah’s line.

Second, the Hebrew words in verse 9 for “you” (אתכם) and “your seed” (זרעכם) are in the plural, and thus the focus on the three sons and their offspring makes any attempt to see this as Noah’s “spiritual children” all the more unnatural. 

Third, the promise of mercy is not merely that God would not universally judge the church, but that, until the end of time, He would not judge the whole world in the same manner (8:21-22, 9:11, 15).

Fourth, animals are included as the recipients of the benefits (9:10, 16-17), which would be even more strange if this had to do with the salvation of souls.

Fifth, the more dominant use of the universal name for “God” (אֱלהִים) throughout the passage, rather than the covenant Name of “LORD” (יְהוָֹה).

But doesn’t the sacrifice, God’s rationale for it, and a threefold use of the covenant name LORD in 8:20-22, imply a “particular grace” element? One main reply that has been given is that the covenant may retain elements pertaining to the covenant of grace and yet the main covenant be common to mankind (as Noah was a party to both). Kuyper points out the fact that the LORD “said in his heart” (v. 21) is actually “counsel God took with himself,” rather than an address to the same parties of the covenant to Noah.2

Most of our back and forth here is the result of pitting creation and redemption against each other to begin with. We have either a latent Pelagianism attempting to push back against a particularism that is out of place here, or else a latent Gnosticism in constant fear of nature’s creeping universalism.

O. Palmer Robertson steers us away from both ditches:

“Redeemed man must not internalize his salvation so that he thinks narrowly in terms of a ‘soul-saving’ deliverance. To the contrary, redemption involves his total life-style as a social, cultural creature … At the same time, these broader implications of God’s covenant with Noah must be viewed in a distinctive redemptive rather than in a more generalized context.”3

The Question of the Expression “Common Grace”

One of the many controversies within the Reformed tradition erupted in the 1920s over the issue of so-called “common grace.” At the risk of oversimplification—since there were other players involved—we may think of Kuyper taking the position in favor of the term, Herman Hoeksema taking the position against the whole idea, and others like Cornelius Van Til who represented something of a middle position.4 What was “common” began to be swept up into a more general soteriological critique of nature that was already trending in Reformed circles. Thus common grace began to be conceived in terms of spiritual benefits for, and even the resultant “efforts of,” unbelievers.5

We need no greater evidence of this tendency than the controversy reemerging in the debate between Van Til and Gordon Clark, when the latter sought ordination two decades later. This in turn caused Westminster faculty members, John Murray and Ned Stonehouse, to write a study for the OPC called The Free Offer of the Gospel. It was manifest that the issue of common grace began to be viewed exclusively in terms of the way Arminians and Wesleyans would have spoken of a prevenient grace that God grants to all in common. Some have attributed this confusion to the fact that Hoeksema was reacting to the three points of the 1924 CRC statement rather than to the whole scope of Kuyper’s writing. What was so alarming was the prospect of a favorable disposition of God to all men. But God is not favorable to the reprobate. The good that they experience is better classified under providence, and will only further condemn them. Such was the case against “common grace” — now understood to mean common-saving-grace.

Now, as to that effect of intensified guilt for the reprobate, we certainly cannot disagree. As to whether the good things of the created order can be rendered anything less than good in themselves by that condemning effect, well, that is another matter.

Whether or not someone wants to argue purely on the basis of the Hebrew and Greek use of the word grace, I will let others work out. Our overall concern should not be with defending either Kuyper’s use or the label itself. It is much more important to insist on the objective terms of the covenant, since if we do not abide by them, we will be disobedient to God.

A properly defined “common grace,” if one does opt to use it in this context, would be a reference to those underserved good things that God gave to all mankind in the original creation, which has as its focus both Genesis 1-2 and Genesis 8-9. One should, at the very least, charitably hear those who use it as Kuyper was using it, lest we argue against straw men.

In both frames (with Adam and Noah) one can see that such grace is not talking about salvation, or about the covenant that God makes with Abraham and those whom He would place in Christ. The covenant of grace is that which shapes the church and gives spiritual benefits for the new creation.

Kuyper’s doctrine can actually be misunderstood at several points. But perhaps the most complex is his distinction that, while all of the “content” of the Noahic Covenant is to the whole world and for its preservation, yet the ultimate “purpose” of it is for the elect. We might call our difficulty in approaching this the probleming of parsing out two “fors,” or two kinds of designs. But it is not so unintelligible. For example, he says of this common preservation that it is “so that the formation of local churches would be possible … entirely conceivable within the organic whole of a history directed by God.”6

The good of preservation in itself, as far as it goes, “is also beneficial for unbelievers and for animals. But the imperturbability, the certainty, the comfort that lay within what God promised us, sealed and sworn, that ‘never again shall there be a flood,’ [Gen. 9:11] is shared only by believers.”7

Elements of the Noahic Covenant

We will notice that the end of Chapter 8 deals with matters later classified as ceremonial law, while Chapter 9 begins to unpack a precursor to the moral law. The idea of “moral law” is not just a label for the Ten Commandments and the ways that those are unpacked in specific Mosaic legislation. It has to do with the nature of the commandments as belonging to the permanent order of creation. In other words, when Cain committed murder in Genesis 4 and when Herod committed adultery in the Gospels, they were each as guilty of violating the moral law as an Israelite would have been in the old covenant.   

It requires some more rigorous logic to parse out the moral and ceremonial in the Noahic covenant. Think of it this way. While all moral law transcends the Mosaic law, it would not follow that no ceremonial law transcends the Mosaic law. The reason for that is that while Israel was a kingdom of priests, there were sacrifices prior to Mount Sinai. That means that there is a natural law dimension to the First Table of the Law (right worship) and not merely to the Second Table (right ethics).

Ultimately, we must allow the New Testament to inform us on the declaration that all meat is cleansed by the work of Christ, as all of the prohibitions (even before Mount Sinai) were ceremonial. They were types of Christ, or, on the flip side, one’s dealing with blood had ultimate reference to what only Christ could do for all mankind (not merely for Israel). 

Kuyper summarized the specific benefits of the Noahic covenant:

“First, man is given moral supremacy over all the animals. Second, man receives permission to eat the flesh of the animals. Third, man is prohibited from eating raw meat with its blood. Fourth, God provides the establishment of government and the institution of the death penalty. These four items are to be understood as expressions of grace, and only in that way can they be correctly understood.”8 

Let us begin with the animals. Something must explain how wild beasts may be subdued in this way, or how others have natures to be domesticated. According to Kuyper, this was “achieved by means of God's twofold action. First, he armed man with heroic courage, ingenuity, and weaponry, in order to overpower the beasts of prey; and secondly, he instilled fear into the predatory animal so that it would withdraw as soon as people approached it.”9

As modern people, we are largely oblivious to the world of fear that early humanity lived within. As Kuyper wrote, “The greatest problem then was how human society could defend itself and be safe from the animal kingdom.”10 For this reason the relation of humans to animals took up so much of this covenant. It was out of disbelief about this very provision that another sin of the Tower of Babel springs, as safety was central to the attempt to gather mankind to one point.

If this covenant is the Scripture’s “spectacles” on natural law, then it would follow that the eating of animals is perfectly natural. However, this seems to conflict either with the original state in Genesis 1 or with the future state, or perhaps both. Kuyper poses the question,

“does your right to kill an animal and use it for food proceed from creation, or not? Calvin denies this and is absolutely correct. Killing an animal is an act of violence that goes against a sense that has been created within us … by nature we recoil from shedding blood also with animals.”11 

I do not think this is a correct reading of Calvin, who seemed only to be raising the question of whether commentators previous to him were right to say that this was a new ordinance, the only proviso seeming to be “that we do not seize upon what our appetite desires, as robbers do, nor yet tyrannically shed the innocent blood of cattle; but that we only take what is offered to us by the hand of the Lord.”12

But circling back to the question of the covenant’s nature, if we divide the ordinances between moral and ceremonial law, are we not committing ourselves to a particular grace element for the Abrahamic community? It would seem so. However, while Calvin and others among the Reformed do this, Kuyper represents a tradition that rejects this.13 

Does the rainbow have any significance in the covenant of grace? Or is it just a dimension of providence? Like other aspects of the covenant narrative (like the sacrifices) there is overlap in application. Consider that God made a promise in that sign, and all of God’s promises find their Yes in Christ (2 Cor. 1:10). So does Christ purchase anything redemptive in that common covenant for the reprobate? No, not at all. But does it follow that the redemptive work of Christ does not have common effects toward them? Again, no. They benefit from every sunrise—sunrises which would never have emerged if God had been simply done with the world.

Civic Implications of the Noahic Covenant

The relevant part of the text from 9:5-6 says this: “From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.’”

There are five clear relevant points about this text: (1) this commandment is to all mankind following Noah, as they are the lone survivors of humanity; (2) this is a divine command; (3) the substance of the command is to take the life of the murderer; (4) the ultimate reason given by God for this response to murder is that the murdered man is an image of God; and (5) the immediate context, both before and after this verse, is a reiteration of the language of the original covenant with Adam, namely to multiply the image and exercise dominion (vv. 1-4, 7).

While considering the backdrop of Genesis 1:26-27, we can even keep in mind 4:9-10, as the ultimate requirement recalls the crying out of innocent blood, and the obligation for just counterforce demands that mankind is indeed his brother’s keeper.

This has been the dominant reading of this passage throughout church history. Not everyone has agreed. In our own day, the so-called Radical Two Kingdom view articulated by David VanDrunen takes this passage as its own jumping off point.

Keith Mathison gives this basic summary:

“proponents of two kingdoms theology assert that Christians live in two kingdoms. They live in a ‘common’ kingdom consisting of the entire human race, which was established by God in His covenant with Noah. They also live in a ‘redemptive’ kingdom consisting of God’s chosen people, a kingdom that was formally established by God in His covenant with Abraham. God rules both kingdoms, but in different ways.”14

VanDrunen himself writes, “I stake much of my political theology on the distinctive nature and purposes of the Noahic covenant (Gen 8:21-9:17).”15 This covenant is universal, preservative, and temporary. What these three seemingly agreeable descriptives are meant to war against is any view that would impose special grace, or the new creational prerogatives, on the people of common grace. In these defining attributes, VanDrunen stresses the covenant’s all-inclusiveness, the absence of any decisive triumph, and that it is never to be worked on as an actually permanent dominion.16

At first glance, then, VanDrunen is in opposition to theonomy and postmillennialism. That may indeed be his overriding motive. But there is such a thing as the law of unintended consequences. Take especially his conception of this covenant as creating a “common” sphere. What he has in mind is that civil government is not for the benefit of one religious group over another. Now he acknowledges that there is also no neutrality. Real justice must be administered. However, we might ask, what if one of those religions to whom the state belongs in common demands injustice as a rule? Is the basic share in that state still as common for the violator of its basic form as it is for its cooperative members?

This becomes especially problematic when we discover how VanDrunen understands the mandate of Genesis 9:5-6.  He writes,

“Contrary to popular assumptions, the reason this text appeals to the image of God is probably not to highlight why murder is so bad but to explain why God delegates such a profound authority to human beings.”17

In other words, the reference to God’s image in the text is not to that which is attacked, but to that image that is born (as God’s representative) in the appointed minister of justice. So VanDrunen also roots the sword of Romans 13 back in the mandate of Genesis 9, but he does so by handing political legitimacy entirely to the civil magistrate and annihilating the counter-claims of the image of God at large. When there is tyranny, the victims will of course be avenged by God in the end, but that is the only justice to be considered by the Christian in this age. 

There are other questions to consider about the rationale embedded in the command. For example, Kuyper explored whether are we dealing (in 9:6) “with an explanation that it will happen this way, or with an institution that it must happen this way”?18 The Hebrew conjunction “for” (ki) is the real hinge of the matter. We are asked to consider how it would read if what followed were merely a descriptive norm. In other words, so and so will murder the first murder “for” (or “because”) God made man in his image. “But that is absurd,” he rightly says, “since the avenger kills the murderer not because the avenger was created in the image of God but because he is a sinner.”19 

This may be an awkward way to put it, but he was at least expressing the view in opposition to the one articulated by VanDrunen. Both the avenger (eventually, the magistrate) and the victim are made in the image of God. While we can agree that the magistrate is conceived as the image because he is God’s representative, so too is the citizen that has been murdered. The image of God was traditionally conceived of as the immediate object attacked in violations of the sixth commandment, for example.

Kuyper separates the dominion mandate from the event of the image being created. Genesis 1:28 does come after 1:26-27, and it is often reasonable to understand breaks in sequence. More to his rationale, though, it “corresponded with his creation in God's image, but nevertheless from this, apart from any mandate, no right for man has flowed forth at all.”20

But as to whether this must sever the connection between dominion and natural law, we should not proceed too fast. Kuyper’s point in context seems to have been that no man has an intrinsic right, by nature, to exercise dominion in such a way as to take the life of other men (or even animals). We must explain any taking of life wholly in terms of a higher principle.

The link between the patriarch and the sword goes beyond how theologians have grounded the just use of force, but it also extends to how we ought to understand the ground of political authority. Robertson calls this “the seed-concept”21 for civil government. It is not that there was no such thing as a government before this. It is also not to suggest that there is not something of government implied in the dominion mandate prior to the fall. The only point has respect to divine law—that is, the origin of the state in terms of God’s clear rationale. 

Kuyper’s view of political authority is complex. Human agency reigns by common grace, but also command. He is careful to show why theocracy and divine right of kings are not necessarily implied.  With those orders of the original creation: “What originates in creation develops and operates automatically, and therefore need not be initiated separately and intentionally.” But civil government is different because it assumes sin. Not only that, but whoever would dare to take the sword in his hands “must be free and able to show his title.”

The whole point is to drive to the necessity of Genesis 9:5-6 as the divine establishment / institution text. Much of this is uncontroversial, but Kuyper takes all of this to mean that in the end, “Not even with respect to Christ,” will man rule over man, and he cites 1 Corinthians 15:28 to the effect that Christ delivers the kingdom to the Father.22 

Concluding Thoughts

It may seem that the only reason the Noahic Covenant is mentioned in Scripture is its relation to the covenant of grace, whereas otherwise natural law would be sufficient to communicate the same. Even Kuyper pointed to its “spiritual significance” as a reason that it “occupies a place in the course of redemptive revelation,”23 but this is potentially misleading.

Consider that part of the reason for the necessity of Scripture is to clarify some elements of general revelation which might otherwise be (1) obscured by sin and finitude, (2) contradicted by the lies of the devil and his servants, or simply (3) lost by the passage of time and place.

As it is, Kuyper would most certainly have resisted any reduction of this ancient arrangement to the merely spiritual. He said this:

“This is how people have become accustomed to viewing the series of covenants. The New Testament is in front, as the only one we need to maintain, and behind this, but having now become obsolete and pointless, were those covenants with Abraham and Israel. And then there is a third covenant, even much farther back beyond those two obsolete covenants, which is days long gone and forgotten was made with Noah and his sons. Precisely for this reason it has no other value for us except as a historical remembrance. And as a result of these notions, people want to know of no other covenant except one designed for saving the soul.”24 

Perhaps, then, we may say that one of the most important reasons to study this covenant is to war against the pietistic reading of Scripture. 

_________________

1. According to Abraham Kuyper, “Pareus, Perkins, Mastricht understood it in this more restricted sense, and Rivet also uses an expression that seems to indicate that he was of the same opinion.” Common Grace, Volume I (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016), 21. 

2. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:25.

3. O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1980), 110, 111.

4. cf. Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2015).

5. Richard Mouw, ‘Volume Introduction’ to Kuyper’s Common Grace, I:xix.

6. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:29.

7. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:30.

8. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:42.

9. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:59.

10. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:43.

11. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:49.

12. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, Volume I (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 291.

13. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:48-49.

14. Keith Mathison, “A Review of David VanDrunen’s Living in God’s Two Kingdoms”

15. David VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 57.

16. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 65.

17. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 107.

18. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:69.

19. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:70.

20. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:78.

21. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 116.

22. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:96.

23. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:28.

24. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:38.