Corporate Personality

Jacob and Esau were brothers. And so they remained...long after their deaths:

"Now Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom. 'Thus says your brother Israel: You know all the hardship that has befallen us, how our fathers went down to Egypt, and we dwelt in Egypt a long time, and the Egyptians afflicted us and our fathers.'" (Numbers 20:14-15).

"Thus says the LORD: 'For three transgressions of Edom, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because he pursued his brother with the sword, and cast off all pity; his anger tore perpetually, and he kept his wrath forever.'" (Amos 1:11).

Nations were named for these two individuals, and thus they lived on. Esau was Edom:

"So Esau dwelt in Mount Seir. Esau is Edom." (Genesis 36:8).

Esau is Edom...and the father of Edom:

"And this is the genealogy of Esau the father of the Edomites in Mount Seir. " (Genesis 36:9).

Jacob, whose God-given name is Israel, is both a man, and also the people called after his name:

"But you, Israel, are my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend." (Isaiah 41:8).

Jacob, God's servant, is also addressed as an individual, not a people:

"Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles." (Isaiah 42:1).

The servant who shall be lifted up on high:

"See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high." (Isaiah 52:13 NRSV).

...is Jesus Christ our Lord:

"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." (John 12:32).

The habit of speaking of a people as if of an individual is deeply ingrained in scripture. Here are some examples where a singular pronoun is used of the nation:

"All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength. Look, O LORD, and see how worthless I have become. Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger." (Lamentations 1:11-12).

"Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me." (Micah 7:8).

"Woe is me because of my hurt! My wound is severe. But I said, 'Truly this is my punishment, and I must bear it.'" (Jeremiah 10:19).

"And Edom said unto him, You shall not pass by me, lest I come out against you with the sword. And the children of Israel said unto him, We will go by the high way: and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for it: I will only, without doing any thing else, go through on my feet." (Numbers 20:18-19).

As will become apparent, the nation is one person, God's son:

"When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." (Hosea 11:1).

Is the idea here that all are one because of common physical descent? Jerome thought so; this is the crux of his argument in 'Against Helvidius.' All are counted as one because, looking back, all came from one, just as the tribes of Israel were once in Abraham: "One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him." (Hebrews 7:9-10). Though mothers contribute half the DNA, in this system, descent is reckoned through the male. Generalizing the principle to all fathers, even those from whom no clan nor tribe is reckoned, leaves 'cousins' equal to 'brothers,' because both have the same 'father,' the founder of the clan. So confronted with the Lord's troublesome 'brothers,' we jump back a generation, to Joseph's father Jacob (Matthew 1:16). Now, if he were the founder of a clan as were Jacob and Esau, his offspring down through the generations could call him 'father,' and would, in consequence, be 'brothers.' As it happens, this is not how the Bible explains why the people of God call one another 'brother:' the Bible's own explanation traces their common descent, not back to Jacob, but up to heaven: "Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?" (Malachi 2:10). Jerome's speculative reconstruction seeks to explain a Bible usage which is already explained...differently. Notice how much more radical the Bible concept is than Jerome's reconstruction. The Bible does not say Israel are the children of Jacob, but that Israel is Jacob.

God promised Abraham that his descendants could not be numbered. The population of the present day numbers in the billions. In Abraham's day, the world's population was small. All of the present-day inhabitants of the globe are descended from those alive in that day. So what was so special or remarkable about God's promise to Abraham? While some men leave no descendants, and others' line peters out in genocide or disaster, most of the men walking around on the globe in 1800 B.C. left an awful lot of descendants. But most of these men are not remembered. All of Abraham's physical descendants are also descendants of Terah, but who ever calls himself a 'child of Terah'? The pagan Terah was promised nothing by God, and believed the nothing which he was told. The promise of founding a nation is a gift of God and is not what belongs to every man by virtue of biology. One aspect of this gift is that the recipient's name lives on, becoming the name of a people.

Paul's understanding of the promise to Abraham is not limited by biology. Paul understood the promised "seed" to be the Messiah:

"Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He says not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." (Galatians 1:16).

We inherit the promise because we are in Christ. At baptism we confess the faith by which we are incorporated into His people. And just as 'Israel' is named after Jacob, 'Christians' are named after Christ. Though this name is introduced almost casually into scripture, the Old Testament habit of identifying a nation as one man carries with it the nation's sharing the founder's name as its common form of identification.

Strictly speaking Moses' law does not permit one to be punished for the sins of another: "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." (Deuteronomy 24:16). But we are in Christ; so there is nothing illegal about His suffering for our sins. We are His body: "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." (1 Corinthians 12:27).

Paul's understanding of this Old Testament theme centers around God's promise and the faith which grasps hold of that promise, not reproductive biology. According to Paul, we, the church, are the progeny of Abraham, who can no more be numbered than the sands of the sea. Jerome insists, contra Paul, that it's biology. But if Paul is wrong about this, then under what rationale do the Gentiles who believe the gospel belong in the church? Will the Roman Catholics willingly eject the Gentiles from the people of the Messiah if that is what it takes to make the Lord's 'brothers' 'cousins'?

Paul's concept is not as radical a departure as it may seem. The Jews confess themselves children of Abraham: "They answered and said to Him, 'Abraham is our father.'" (John 8:39). But Judaism, throughout the Biblical period, always welcomed proselytes:

“But Ruth said:
'Entreat me not to leave you,
Or to turn back from following after you;
For wherever you go, I will go;
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people,
And your God, my God.'” (Ruth 1:16).

“Do not let the son of the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD speak, saying, 'The LORD has utterly separated me from His people;' nor let the eunuch say, 'Here I am, a dry tree.' For thus says the LORD: 'To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, and choose what pleases Me, and hold fast My covenant, even to them I will give in My house and within My walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Also the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to the LORD, to serve Him, and to love the name of the LORD, to be His servants—everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and holds fast My covenant—even them I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on My altar; for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.'” (Isaiah 56:3-7).

This means that some people are children of Abraham for no other reason than because they believe in the God of Abraham. Their physical descent runs through others. The bottom line on who is a Jew and who is not was always faith: "Whoever renounces idol worship may be called a Jew." (Megillah, 13a. quoted p. 192, The Wisdom of Israel, editor Lewis Browne). Isaac was not born after the natural fashion; he is a child of promise. He is the gift of God. It is interesting that 'Abraham' is considered a peculiarly appropriate name for a convert to Judaism: "A person becomes a member of the House of Israel either by birth or by conversion. . .The convert is then given a Hebrew name. In the case of men, the name is usually Abraham; considered a son of the founder of Judaism, who brought many converts to the One God, he is called Abraham ben Abraham." (Leo Trepp, Judaism, Development and Life, pp. 318-319). The convert, like Abraham, went out from his home at the leading of God. The convert is not less the child of Abraham than any other Jew, but is even named the son of Abraham.

In the John the Baptist's day, converts to Judaism were expected to undergo purification by baptism. But John called all to submit to baptism. All are converts, no one is born a Jew: "Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones." (Matthew 3:8-9). Following this logic Baptists today expect candidates for baptism to testify to their conversion. Reversing this trend, the dispensationalists deny that anyone is, or can be, a convert, because not the convert but only heirs to the genome are the real article.