Who fulfills the dominion mandate?

Within the Reformed community there is always much discussion and sermonizing on the dominion mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1.28).  There are many Reformed pastors and theologians who appeal to this passage of Scripture and argue that the Church must carry out this command.  The Church must not only carry out the mandate through evangelism, they argue, but also through procreation.  After all, Christ reissued the mandate to the Church in the Great Commission (Matt. 28.18-20) and we are still obligated to God’s first command to Adam and Eve.  Hence, the bottom line of their argument is that through the accomplished work of Christ the Church fulfills the dominion mandate.  While this sounds true and scriptural, it misses the mark by a significant distance.  It might surprise us to discover that the Church does not fulfill the dominion mandate.  If the Church does not fulfill the mandate, then who does?  Christ fulfills the dominion mandate. When we look at the opening chapters of the creation account we all agree upon these facts: God created man, male and female, and gave them the dominion mandate.  They were to subdue the earth by extending the Garden to the ends of the earth and filling the earth with the image of God through procreation.  We also agree that Adam was the spiritual head in his marriage to Eve and therefore the one upon whom the responsibilities of fulfilling the mandate fell.  Eve was Adam’s helpmate.  We also agree upon the events subsequent to man’s creation—they rebelled against God.  It is here where many fail to consider the effects of the fall.  As a result of the fall man cannot fulfill the command of God because of the abiding presence of sin.  Even if God cleansed the earth of all wicked men and started over with a righteous man, because of man’s sinfulness, he will fail. Noah, the righteous man, one who walked with God, failed.  We must remember that Adam and Eve served as types, people who foreshadowed the person and work of Christ. In this case, Adam points to Christ (Rom. 5.12-19), and Eve points to the Church (Eph. 5.25ff).  Christ is the one upon whom the responsibility of fulfilling the dominion mandate falls, not the Church.  The Church, like Eve, serves as the helpmate to the covenant head, who is also our husband, namely Christ.  This has some important implications for the manner in which we participate in fulfilling the dominion mandate. We do not fulfill the mandate through procreation.  We can not, no matter how hard we try, make Christians: “But to all who did receive [Christ], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1.12-13).  Rather, it is Christ, who unites with his bride, the Church, to produce godly offspring.  It is only when Christ sovereignly calls a person into his kingdom by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit that he becomes a child of God.  No matter how many children a couple might have there is no guarantee that all their children will be saved, to wit, Jacob and Esau.  The bride, the Church, produces children when we take the seed of the Gospel and plant it in the hearts of men.  Some will plant, others within the Church will water, but it is God who gives the increase.  This is how, for example, that Paul, though he was single and did not have wife, had many children in the faith (1 Cor. 4.14, 17).  This means that the barren single woman can still have many children, not because she has resulted to medical technology but because she has united to Christ to assist her husband in fulfilling the dominion mandate. It is important that we see the differences between what we often hear and the biblical position on the dominion mandate.  What we typically hear is that, the Church fulfills the dominion mandate on the redemptive work of Christ, therefore we must have many children to fill the earth.  The biblical position is, the Church assists Christ, and he fulfills the mandate.  The number of children that a couple might or might not have, is not a matter of biblical command but falls under the category of Christian liberty.  While it may not seem significant, the question boils down to this: Will we stand at the end of history in front of Christ as the ones who have fulfilled the dominion mandate through our labors, or will we stand behind Christ, the one who has fulfilled the mandate through his labors? The two options are worlds apart.  Let us assist Christ, our husband, as he fulfills the dominion mandate by his labors.

 John V. Fesko
Academic Dean, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Historical Theology

EDUCATION

B.A., Georgia State University; 
M.A.Th., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; 
Ph.D., King's College, University of Aberdeen, Scotland

The Evils of Pietism or False Piety

Ambrose Bierce once defined ritualism as a "Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass." Those of us involved in trying to restore liturgy to the Church (not to mention a sense of dignity in worship) should always keep taunts like this one in the forefront of our minds. In our sinful hands, we can twist anything out of the shape God gave it.

I think it was Jaroslav Pelikan who defined tradition as the living faith of the dead, as opposed to traditionalism, which is the dead faith of the living. A lot of poison is contained in the ism of those three small letters. Reason is good; rationalism is idolatrous. Ritual is inescapable; ritualism is refusal to think about what you are doing. And though piety is nothing more than simple godliness, pietism is a thorough-going sentimentalist idolatry. It is evil.

Of course, in our culture, as ethical standards continue to deteriorate, it is perilously easy for ethical slackers to dismiss as "pietistic" anyone who takes the Bible seriously. "And a legalist must be someone who loves God more than I do." We want to have nothing to do with this sort of slanderous attack on godly character. Simple, devout piety is of great worth in the sight of God. But we must also remember that in a deteriorating culture, there are many who are attracted to the form of godliness without understanding the power of it (2 Tim. 3:5). Any port will do in a storm.

Over many years of pastoral counseling I have seen this phenomenon many times. A family has really tight standards in a host of dubious or debatable areas: hair, dresses, rock music, movies, language, and you probably can finish the list. But as time goes on, it becomes apparent to the pastor who is seeking to help the family that inside this particular whitewashed sepulchre are heaps of dead men's bones. And we are not talking about an odd quirk or two—rather, we are talking about basic Ten Commandments stuff, including (but not limited to) adultery, incest, covenant breaking, lying, disobedience, and rage.

In short, pietism leads directly and inexorably to impiety. But we have to take care; pietism should not be defined as having tight standards, but rather a problem of having inverted standards. Someone who tithed out of his spice rack was not necessarily a pietist. Jesus said that this was something they ought to have done (Matt. 23:23). But the reason He attacked them and gave them no quarter was that they neglected the weightier matters of the law—judgment, mercy, and faith. When this happens, there is moral inversion and a great deal of woe (Is. 5:20). This kind of inversion cannot happen without perversion following after. The more time I spend in pastoral ministry, the more I hate pietism. This monstrous system devours families, husbands, wives, sons, and daughters. And when the family first begins diligently whitewashing the tomb—before the corpse has started to stink—and you try to question what they are doing, their reaction is to think you are attacking white wash per se.

Paul teaches us this principle clearly. The commandments and doctrines of men are worthless when it comes to restraint of the sinful flesh (Col. 2:23). Our only Savior from sin is Jesus Christ, and the benefits of His salvation are mediated to us through His means of grace—Word and sacrament—and the blessing of this grace is appropriated by faith. It is not appropriated when we decide to scurry around inventing rules like good little Christians.

To spell it out. A daughter may have read every Elsie Dinsmore book ever written and still have a problem with masturbation. A son may never have seen an R-rated movie, and still be up in his bedroom drawing pictures of women being abused and raped. A father might not let his daughters go to a ball because it is a "worldly" activity and yet fly into fits of rage at the dinner table every other night. A wife might be wearing a head covering the size of a small tablecloth, and still be the most unsubmissive woman in three counties.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When we put on tender mercies, when we put on Christ, then and only then is it safe to put on a homeschool jumper or a classical Christian school uniform. Then and only then is it safe to have an opinion of rock and roll. Then and only then is it appropriate to think about whether there were too many deaths in that action movie. Then and only then is it wise to teach your children anything at all. Sin comes from Adam. It arises in our hearts, unbidden. It does the same thing in the hearts of our children. It cannot be fixed by means of quarantine. When we keep our children away from the government school cooties, we are sometimes astonished when our kids figure out how to lie all by themselves. Only Christ can save us, and when He does this, He does it His way.

Doug Wilson