I was listening to a debate between Gregg Strawbridge and a hyper-Preterist over the nature of the resurrection. Strawbridge said that the resurrection of the body was important because of God’s concern for all of creation. The hyper-Preterist responded that this ought to imply the redemption of rocks and dirt, which everyone knows is absurd because they don’t have sin. I was reminded of similar argumentation used against the abiding validity of human culture and created institutions, as well as an overall assumption that God is not concerned with non-sentient beings. Strawbridge was correct to take this objection head on, pointing to the fact that the Israelites would often carry bones with them, not wishing for the dead to remain in foreign lands.
I thought more about this, and it seems to be a prevalent disposition amongst Western thinkers. You may remember that Parmenides used this argument against Socrates, and it was pretty devastating in their immediate context. Socrates was not comfortable confessing that there was a form for dirt, bugs, and gunk.
Strawbridge was right though, and I often insist on the integrity of dirt and cows within God’s beatific plan. The Old Testament is full of this sort of emphasis, as holy war was conducted against men, women, children, and livestock, complete with orders to burn cities to the ground and never rebuild them. Conversely, the Israelites gave portions of their herds and harvest to God. They had to honor the very land in which they lived, being commanded to give it a rest on the Sabbath year. When they sinned, the land became punished, and often had “iniquity” “visited upon it” by God.
Genesis 19 speaks of the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah as including all that grows on the ground:
24Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; 25And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
Leviticus 18: 24-28 explains that a sinful people contaminate the land and indeed make it sinful:
‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your own nation or any stranger who dwells among you (for all these abominations the men of the land have done, who were before you, and thus the land is defiled), lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you.
We see that in Deuteronomy 32:43 that there is even mention made of atonement for the land:
Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people; For He will avenge the blood of His servants,
And render vengeance to His adversaries; He will provide atonement for His land and His people.”
Elsewhere in the Old Testament we see that atonement is made for the altar and for the temple. The land is connected with this too, as it all has to do with God’s holy space. There is a connection between mankind and the ground, just as there is a connection between the priest and the temple or between the sacerdos and the sacrament.
The Epistle to the Hebrews also makes use of the union between mankind and the ground in its metaphor about apostates:
Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned. (6:7-8)
We should not make the mistake of calling this “just a metaphor.” Thorns and thistles are an ongoing image, indicative of contentious men, as well as an accursed location. Genesis 3:18 shows that because of Adam’s sin the land produces thorns and thistles, and Hosea 10: 8 also employs this image for terms of judgment. Numbers 33:55 says that any inhabitant of Canaan that is not driven out will be a thorn to Israel. Joshua 23: 13 says the same thing. 2 Samuel 23:6 & 7 says that evil men are like thorns. Isaiah constantly uses thorns to signify eschatological judgment. Ezekiel 28: 24 calls Israel’s neighbors thorns. We also remember the parable of the sower, in which thorns choke out the gospel message.
Jesus is a tree. He also wore a crown of thorns, as he was pierced for the thorny men’s own piercing.
The point of all this is that mankind is the head of all creation. He is made of dirt. He is the land in a real sense. The creation climaxes with man, and he is the king of the land. This is also why Solomon’s bride is so vegetative. The Song of Solomon is about the love between the temple and the land, and that’s the point behind the agricultural and wildlife imagery. After we read the New Testament we realize that Jesus is the temple, and thus we are the land. Jesus wants more than just the promised land though, and Paul extends the promise of the 5th commandment out from land to world. He can do this because Jesus extended the holy space at the great commission. Now all of the world is to be sanctified.
When a people sin, a land sins. This is what God’s concern with “nations” is all about. Jesus’ kingdom is not from these things, but it is for them. It transcends them, but it includes them. It changes them, but it glorifies them.
