World Council of Churches
Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches
Reformed Churches Bern-Jura-Solothurn

Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF)

INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL CONFERENCE
“Promised Land”

Church Center Bürenpark, Bern, Switzerland
10 - 14 September 2008 

The New Testament Reception of the
Covenant with Abraham[1]

Prof. Dr Jostein Ådna
School of Mission and Theology, Norway

PDF version for downloads

Like other outstanding figures in the Old Testament and in the history of Israel—e.g. Moses and David—Abraham plays a prominent role in the New Testament.[2] In this paper I will investigate how the covenant with Abraham, recorded in the Old Testament, is received and interpreted in the New Testament. 

According to Genesis, God’s covenant with Abraham comprised both the promise to make him exceedingly numerous or fruitful (Gen. 17:1-7) and the promise to give the land of Canaan to him and his offspring (17:8; cf. 15:18-21). In addition to the two covenant texts in Genesis 15 and 17,[3] the promises of rich posterity and of the land are uttered in numerous other Genesis texts, as well, both to Abraham and to Isaac and Jacob. I have counted ten occurrences of the promise of descendants, six occurrences of the land promise and seven cases of combination of the two.[4] Actually, these two promises represent the framing and uniting theological theme of the patriarchal narratives. In chapters 15 and 17 the promises are combined with covenantal language, according to which God unilaterally binds himself to fulfilling them. 

As covenantal commitments on the part of God, the promises to Abraham of making him a great nation and of granting the land to this nation, called Israel, are recurring echoes throughout the Pentateuch and the Old Testament at large (e.g. Exod. 13:5, 11; 32:13; Num. 11:12; 14:23; Deut. 1:8; 6:10; 2 Kings 13:23; Micah 7:20; Ps. 105:8ff.). The covenantal promises to Abraham of offspring and land remain a fundamental issue in biblical theology. 

Despite huge inner diversities, all Jews at the time of Jesus and the New Testament were united in their self-identity as children of Abraham, i.e. in the claim and consciousness of existing thanks to God’s promise to make Abraham a people. In a number of cases the New Testament confirms as absolutely undisputed that both individual Jews as well as the Jewish people as a collective entity are legitimate descendants of Abraham and heirs of the promises to him (see Luke 1:54f.; 13:16; 19:9; Acts 7:2; 13:26; Rom. 11:1). 

In contexts of controversy and accusations, we also encounter the questioning or even the outright rejection of Abrahamic heritage. This is the case with John the Baptist in his words of doom to his contemporaries (see Matt. 3:9 and Luke 3:8)[5] and with the controversy between the Johannine Jesus and “the Jews” in John 8:31-59. Some have characterised such strands within the New Testament as anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic. We should be very careful and hesitant with such characterisations, because these texts clearly stand in the tradition of social and cultic criticism in the prophets, who made similar accusations, e.g. “Then the Lord said … ‘You are not my people and I am not your God’” (Hos. 1:9). 

Finally, in the New Testament we come across texts that lay claim to being children of Abraham on behalf of believing gentiles. At the forefront of this conspicuous claim are the famous Pauline texts in Galatians 3 and Romans 4, to which we shall turn immediately; but Heb. 2:16 and the saying about the many who will come from east and west to eat with Abraham and the other patriarchs in the kingdom (Matt. 8:11; Luke 13:29) are also likely examples of this.[6]  

The central texts regarding the New Testament reception of the covenant with Abraham are Galatians 3 and Romans 4. Within these two passages the name of Abraham is explicitly mentioned 15 times (Gal. 3:6, 7, 8, 9, 14, 16, 18, 29; Rom. 4: 1, 2, 3, 9, 12, 13, 16), over against only four additional occurrences in Paul.[7] It comes as no surprise that the term “promise”—epangelia in Greek—is also densely concentrated in these two passages, with 12 occurrences (Gal. 3:14 [sing.], 16 [pl.], 17 [sing.], 18 bis [sing.], 21 [pl.], 22 [sing.], 29 [sing.]; Rom. 4:13, 14, 16, 20 [all in singular]), which make up almost half of all cases in the Pauline letters.[8] It may surprise us that in contrast to these high numbers the term “covenant”—Greek diathēkē—is only used twice in Paul’s Abraham passages, in Gal 3:15 and 17. In these verses, the closely related meaning of the Greek word diathēkē—testament in the sense of “will”—is at the forefront, and the point made by Paul is Christological and not referring to people and land as the content of the covenantal promises.  

In Gal. 3:6-9 Paul states that those who believe are the children of Abraham. He bases this statement on the analogy to what Gen. 15:5-6 says about Abraham’s response to God’s promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky: “[Abraham] believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” As a believer himself, Abraham will have those who believe as his children. For Paul this obviously implies the gentiles without any discrimination, as he deduces from God’s promises to Abraham, both before and after Genesis 15. I quote Paul’s argument in verse 8: “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the gentiles shall be blessed in you.’” This citation by Paul is a combination of Gen 12:3 and 18:18.[9] 

In Paul’s contextual reading of these Genesis texts, faith stands out as the medium through which the divine blessing of Abraham will reach out to the gentiles. Therefore, when they believe, they become his heirs and constitute the fulfilment of God’s promise to make Abraham a great nation. 

Actually, the second covenantal text in Genesis 17 talks of a “multitude of nations”—h^amōn gōyīm in Hebrew and plēthos ethnōn, polla ethnē in Greek, (see vv. 4, 5)—and this usage of a plural form might bolster Paul’s case for including the gentiles among the blessed who represent the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham. In the concluding verse of Galatians 3, Paul states this explicitly: “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (v. 29).

However, in Galatians 3 Paul’s exegetical effort to include all gentile believers among Abraham’s children is accompanied and supplemented by a somewhat forced demonstration that the offspring promised to Abraham is an individual. 

This is his argument in verses 15-18. I quote verse 16: “Now the promises were made to Abraham and his offspring, it does not say, ‘And to offsprings’, as of many, but it says, ‘And to offspring’, that is, to one person, who is Christ.” The term “offspring”, by which Paul here makes his case, Greek sperma and Hebrew zæra^c, is used in a number of the repeated promises of land to Abraham, for instance Gen 17:8: “I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding” (cf. 13:15 and 24:7). In the next verse, verse 17, Paul continues his argument by stating that the covenant ratified by God in this way in Genesis 17 cannot be annulled by something introduced many hundred years later, i.e. the law and the Sinai covenant. This is the closest Paul comes to arguing theologically with the unilateral character of God’s covenant with Abraham. But here his argument is Christological and applies to Christ as Abraham’s offspring (cf. Matt 1:1). In Galatians 3 Paul supports his ecclesiological statement that the believing gentiles are the people of God and the children of Abraham, as we saw, from the promise that all nations will be blessed in Abraham.  

Let me also briefly address the second Pauline text where Abraham and the promise to him play a crucial role. Romans 4 repeats the major point in Galatians 3 about the believing Abraham (see the quotation of Gen 15:6 in verse 3) as the father of all who share his faith (see vv. 16-18). 

However, Romans 4 also explicitly addresses the distinction between Jews and gentiles, expounded as the circumcised—Greek, the peritomē—and the uncircumcised—Greek, the akrobystia (see verses 9-12).[10] Striking in Paul’s argument are, first, his chronological observation that Abraham was justified by God as a believer before he was circumcised,[11] and, second, that Paul refrains from calling the circumcision imposed on Abraham and his descendants a covenant or a covenantal sign, as Gen 17:10,11 do. Instead, Paul minimizes the status of the circumcision to a subsequent seal of the righteousness that Abraham had already received, see Rom 4:11.[12] Nevertheless, by introducing circumcision, Paul makes a distinction between Jews and gentiles, stating that Abraham is the ancestor both to believing gentiles and believing Jews. 

By doing this, Paul prepares the point that he elaborates extensively later in Romans, in chapters 9-11. There he demonstrates that the circumcised members of the Christian community constitute the organic nucleus and kernel of the people of God. The Jewish believers in Jesus comprise the true and natural descendants of Abraham; they are the fulfilment of the covenantal promises made to him. Gentile believers are taken up and included in the community in the same way as, metaphorically, wild branches are grafted into a cultivated tree (see 11:17-24). 

Conclusion

The covenantal promise to Abraham of numerous descendants still applies in a specific way to the people of Israel,[13] as represented by those Jews who believe (in Jesus). Additionally, Paul fosters a firm hope and conviction that “all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:25), as “they are beloved (as regards election), for the sake of their ancestors” (v. 28). Believing gentiles are also included among the descendants of Abraham, on like footing with their Jewish brothers and sisters (see Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 12:13).  

The second promise to Abraham, of the land, has, however, been superseded and is transcended by the world (see Rom 4:13)[14] or the kingdom of God.[15] Hence, from the perspective of the New Testament there exists no salvation-historically valid basis for a Jewish demand on the “land of the fathers” grounded in the covenantal promise to Abraham.