A Biblical Theology Of The Common Good

By George Van Pelt Campbell

[George Van Pelt Campbell is Associate Professor of Sociology and Religion, Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.]

Abstract

Christian commitment to the common good has grounds in the creation of humans by God as his image. They are designed to work together as social beings to fill the earth and rule it for one another’s benefit and God’s glory. Because humans are social beings, human flourishing requires social conditions such as cooperation, respect for the rights of others, compliance with norms, and social order. This being so, redemption will ultimately entail a redeemed social order—God’s reign on earth—in which humans will fully flourish. In the meantime, Christians, by their character and actions, are to bear witness to the world about God’s kingdom, providing glimpses and foretastes of it.

*******

The desirability of the “common good” is commonly assumed but is not commonly developed in detail.[1] Inability to articulate a vision for the common good prevails Christian leaders and the Christian community in general.[2] This article seeks to provide a new argument for commitment to the common good among Christians.[3]

Definition of the Common Good

The common good can be defined most basically as any good sought or shared by two or more people.[4] Friendship is an example. Humans are social beings, as Aristotle noted,[5] so the goods humans seek are fundamentally related to social conditions. Thus the common good is better defined as the full flourishing of everyone in the community, and the conditions which facilitate that flourishing are seen as promoting the common good.[6] Ostensibly, the goal of all societies is to establish and maintain the social, legal, and political arrangements that will promote the common good. Understanding what those conditions are is the most basic theoretical topic of sociology.[7] It is also a concern addressed by Christian Scripture.[8]

The Social Nature Of Humans And The Common Good

The argument to be developed here can be summarized as follows. Humans were created by God as social beings. This means that full human flourishing cannot be achieved apart from the social conditions that this requires.[9] Thus redemption necessarily entails a social order in which full human flourishing will be achieved. Therefore, to faithfully bear witness to God’s goal in human redemption, Christians must work for the common good.

Humans Are Social Beings

Like most things Christian, the fundamental truth about humans is declared in the Torah. Genesis 1:26-28, the “cultural mandate,” defines human nature and the purpose for which God created humans.[10] Two aspects of Hebrew anthropology are highlighted: that humans were created for a function and that they are relational beings.[11] Both are social in nature; that is, by their nature they require cooperation with others.

The first quality highlighted about human nature is that humans are functional beings,[12] created to work,[13] for the glory of God.[14] Genesis 1:26 says, “Let us make man as our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion.” The best view of the “image of God” is that humans are made “as the image of God.” That is, as ancient Near Eastern kings placed an image of themselves, filled with their “breath,” in conquered territory to represent them, so God placed humans as his image to function in the same way: to represent him by serving as his vice-regents over the created order.[15] The imagery implicit here is that God is the Great King, and humans are “like God” (Gen. 1:26) in that they exercise dominion as he does. The substance of that dominion is detailed in the cultural mandate: they are to “multiply” so that they can “subdue and have dominion” over the earth. As Waltke puts it, “humankind is created to establish the rule of God on earth.”[16] This means they are to master the physical world in order to develop its latent potential and use it for their own good, for the good of others, and for God’s glory. The emphasis on the good results is developed in Genesis 2:9, which notes that the trees of the garden of Eden were “pleasant to the sight and good for food,” that is, aesthetically satisfying and functionally useful. God made the environment to bring delight and to sustain people, as well as to teach about him through his handiwork.

Several considerations emphasize that God intended cooperation to be essential to fulfilling the mandate, i.e. fulfilling the mandate is a social enterprise.[17] First, many humans are required to do it, and to “fill the earth” (1:28) requires cooperation between males and females. Second, the text explicitly states that “humanity” (1:26) is divided into “male and female” (1:27), further making clear that if humanity is to fulfill the mandate, cooperation between both kinds of humans is necessary.[18] Implicit in both of these is what is commonly acknowledged: 1. The required skills are divided not only between males and females but between human individuals generally. 2. The mandate can be fulfilled only by the aggregate of human skills. Thus cooperation is both necessary and beneficial in human labor.[19]

Another indicator of cooperation is in the role humans are assigned: to “rule” (1:26, 28). In the ancient Near East it was assumed that a king reigned in a god’s stead.[20] When God assigns humans a kingly function in Genesis 1, it means that he is cooperating with humans in his reign on earth. Revelation ends Christian Scripture with the same cooperation in the eschaton. Humans “will reign with him for a thousand years” (Rev. 20:6).

Genesis 2:15-25 also emphasizes that cooperation is essential to accomplishing God’s design. Genesis 2 elaborates the theme of labor introduced in 1:26-28. The reason “it is not good for the man to be alone” (2:18) is not that the man was lonely, which is not suggested by the context. It is that God commanded the man to labor in the garden (2:15), but alone he would be unable to accomplish that task.[21] This is why God provided a “helper” rather than a “companion.”[22] Thus Genesis 2 reiterates Genesis 1: male-female cooperation is essential. Further, the God who does not work alone in creating man (1:26) creates a man who will not work alone either! All of these indicate that fulfilling the cultural mandate is social. It can be fulfilled only as people cooperate with others.

The description of the functional nature of humans (1:26) is immediately followed by a second defining quality: humans are relational beings.[23] This is the very definition of “social.” Genesis 1:27 elaborates this aspect of human nature in the first piece of poetry in the Hebrew Bible. This artfully constructed poem has a vocabulary of only seven different words that are arranged in three lines of four words each.[24] The first two lines form a chiasm in Hebrew. Lines two and three are parallel and explain the “image of God” as “male and female,” showing that both males and females function equally as the image of God. But there is more. Genesis 1:26 declares humans as the image of God. Genesis 1:27 explains that “humans” are specifically “male and female.” Then 1:28 draws the conclusion: the image of God accomplishes its function as male and female work together. The explanation that “humans” are “male and female” in 1:27 allows 1:28 to explain the manner in which the “dominion” announced in 1:26 is to be accomplished. It says, “God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ ” The mandate cannot be accomplished by males or females alone. They must cooperate to bring children into the world to populate it so that a planet full of humans can fully develop the earth’s potential. The text clearly has marriage in view.[25]

In short, Genesis shows that humans were created by God as social beings whose nature (relational) and function (rulers to fulfill the cultural mandate) both require cooperation to be accomplished.

Human Flourishing And Social Conditions

Since human nature and function are inescapably social, individual and social flourishing are significantly dependent upon social conditions. The most fundamental of these social conditions is social order. Social order involves both the absence of conflict and the presence of conditions that facilitate social cooperation.[26] Creating and sustaining social order requires a series of things. First it requires government as an administrative institution. It also requires social agreement about what “the good” is, that is, agreement on beliefs. In addition it requires agreement on resultant standards of behavior (“norms”) and compliance with them. While social order comes in degrees, a reasonable amount of it is necessary for individual and social flourishing. In its absence, sustained relationships and cooperative labor are diminished. For example, as agreement on beliefs diminishes in a culture, social conflict results, diminishing human flourishing.[27] Or, if the government is so inefficient and bureaucratic that it takes months of paperwork and a year’s salary simply to obtain a government permit to open a small business, everyone suffers needlessly, the country will tend to be poor, and human flourishing is diminished.[28] Or again, if corruption is high in a country, this social structure tends to perpetuate poverty, and human flourishing is diminished.[29]

Another social requirement for human flourishing is respect for human rights. Wolterstorff persuasively argues that a Christian should hold “that having one’s rights honored is likewise constitutive of one’s flourishing. . . . My well-being is constituted in good measure by the actions and restraints from action of others. It is in their hands. Well-being is intrinsically social.”[30] In other words, while living virtuously is constitutive of my flourishing, being violated or harmed by someone else diminishes my flourishing. Hence social conditions, including social order and the actions of others, are determinative of the degree of human flourishing. Obviously, complete human flourishing, and complete accomplishment of the cultural mandate, would require complete social order.

Having seen that humans are social beings and that this means that human flourishing requires social conditions, attention turns to the next part of the argument.

The Kingdom Of God And Social Order

Since full flourishing for social beings requires appropriate social conditions, redemption in its fullest sense requires those social conditions. Examination of the kingdom of God in the Scriptures confirms this conclusion. As Merrill says, the kingdom of God refers to the reign of God on earth.[31] It is this reign that humans were created to extend. So prominent a biblical theme is it that many have held that it is the biblical center.[32] Eichrodt states it this way: “That which binds together indivisibly the two realms of the Old and New Testaments—different in externals as they may be—is the irruption of the Kingship of God into this world and its establishment here.”[33] God’s sovereignty, i.e. his kingship, is “the first and perhaps grandest of the descriptions that characterize the God of the Old Testament in the Genesis record.”[34] This emphasis begins in Genesis 1, where God is pictured as King. His kingship is not limited to the “image” concept. His creating and naming things in Genesis 1 demonstrates his sovereignty as does the fact that he bestows upon humans the right to rule (Gen. 1:26).[35] His kingship is also demonstrated by the fact that Deuteronomy is structured as a Hittite suzerain-vassal treaty between a king and his people.[36] Further, the structure and argument of Genesis 1 crystallize the meaning of God’s kingship. In 1:2 the earth is declared to be “chaotic and empty.”[37] These two words outline God’s kingly work in chapter 1, with days 1-3 of the creation account undoing the chaos by establishing order and days 4-6 undoing the emptiness as God fills the creation with good things.[38] That is, the opening text of the Torah defines God as a king who brings his kingdom by bringing order from chaos and fullness from emptiness. This is the model for how humans who are “like God” are to “subdue and rule” in God’s stead. So ordering the world is an indispensable part of God’s purpose for creating humans. Ordering the world is sine qua non of human flourishing.[39]

Therefore, God’s kingdom cannot ultimately be just a “spiritual” reality.[40] In the Torah and Mosaic Covenant, God’s kingdom is a social order that includes the elements necessary for nationhood: a people in a land with law and kingship.[41] In Eden, for example, Adam and Eve (a people) live in the garden (a land) with a prohibition from God about the tree (a law) and a mandate to exercise dominion under God’s authority (kingship). The Abrahamic and Davidic covenants are structured in this way as well. Waltke is correct: “These themes of ‘people,’ ‘land,’ ‘law,’ and ‘king’ [are] essential concepts of ‘the irruption of the kingdom of God.’ ”[42]

In the Mosaic Covenant, God established his kingdom as a national social order. Waltke explains, “At Mount Sinai Moses mediates God’s word that seals God’s covenant relationship with Israel and defines Israel as a nation set apart from the other nations. Israel’s ratification of it empowers them to construct an earthly replica of heaven itself for the worship of their God.”[43] Waltke clearly discerns the predictable results of the Mosaic Covenant: “The enterprise of creating the physical kingdom of Israel is doomed from the beginning.”[44] He explains,

The Sinai covenant has a glaring weakness: Israel attempted to keep it by their own resolve. Many Jews regarded it as a covenant of works. But if the covenant of works failed in the Garden of Eden before the Fall, how much more will the Sinai covenant fail by human resolve in defiled Canaan? The covenant mediated by Moses was doomed to failure from the start, as foreseen already by Moses (Deuteronomy 30:1-3) and Joshua (24:14-27).[45]

“In other words, the Old Testament is a masterpiece of Indirection.”[46] God gave the Sinai covenant to show that a fully flourishing social order is not possible in a sinful world, for in spite of human confidence that they could obey if they just knew the rules (Exod. 19:8), sin rendered that impossible and still does. Full human flourishing must come by another means. And God intends it to come!

This understanding leads to the New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-33), which Christ inaugurates.[47] It is widely acknowledged that there is an “already” and a “not yet” to the manifestation of the kingdom of God under the New Covenant.[48] The “already” is the present spiritual manifestation of the kingdom of God. In it, the people of God is the church, the “land” is “Christified” or “Christologized” as the situation of being “in Christ,”[49] the law is the “law of Christ,” and God’s kingship is exercised through his providence and his people sharing the gospel. The clearest statement is Matthew 12:28: “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”[50] Ladd observes, “Jesus saw his ministry as a fulfillment of the Old Testament promise in history, short of the apocalyptic consummation.”[51]

But the New Testament also describes an apocalyptic “not yet” aspect of the kingdom, a synonym of the Jewish “Age to Come.”[52] In the eschaton, the kingdom will no longer be primarily “spiritual.” It will resume its full social expression of “God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule to bless the earth.”[53] Ladd says about this aspect of the kingdom, “The coming of God’s kingdom will mean the final and total destruction of the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41), the formation of a redeemed society unmixed with evil (Matt 13:36-43), perfected fellowship with God at the messianic feast (Luke 13:28-29).”[54] In this eschatological order, full human flourishing will be achieved, unhindered by the limitations of human sin, because “the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). Revelation pictures it as Eden restored.[55] And in it, the saints “will reign with [Christ] for a thousand years” (20:6). Of that day, Merrill writes, “Mankind, fully redeemed and restored, will then take up the privileges and responsibilities of reigning for which he was created, and at last the kingdom of earth will also become the kingdom of heaven.”[56] The Lord’s prayer will finally be fulfilled: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).

This final expression of the kingdom of God involves the redemption of the entire cosmos, not just individual humans, as Romans 8:18-30 describes. Bruce summarizes Romans 8 this way:

So creation as a whole cannot attain the full end for which she was brought into being. . . . Man was put in charge of the “lower” creation and involved it with him when he fell; through the redemptive work of the “second man,” the entail of the fall is broken, not only for man himself but for the creation which is dependent upon him. If words mean anything, these words of Paul denote not the annihilation of the present material universe on the day of revelation, to be replaced by a universe completely new, but the transformation of the present universe so that it will fulfill the purpose for which God created it. Here again we have an echo of the Old Testament hope—the creation of a new heavens and a new earth “wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Pet 3:13, quoting Isa 65:17, 66:22; cf. Rev 21:1).[57]

Because humans are social beings, and full human flourishing requires social conditions, redemption will ultimately entail a redeemed social order in which humans will flourish.

Working For The Common Good

Christians bear witness in the world to God’s kingdom. Because God’s kingdom entails a redeemed social order in which humans achieve their purpose, faithful Christian witness cannot be limited to explaining initiation into God’s kingdom. It must also include witness to the fullness of the kingdom, in which humans achieve full flourishing. This functions in at least two ways. One is for Christians to picture the kingdom in the church, functioning as a foretaste of God’s new society.[58] The other is to work outside the walls of the church for the common good.

The Bible explicitly endorses working for the common good in the world. Jeremiah 29:7 says to believers in a hostile world, “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” This is virtually a definition of the “common good.”[59] The story of Joseph (Gen. 37-50) is another example of a believer sent to serve God in a secular post in a pagan nation in which serving the common good resulted in good for God’s people (45:7; 50:20).

Jesus himself demonstrated this commitment. His miracles bore witness to the coming kingdom of God in which the results of sin would be eliminated: God’s kingdom will have no blind, no lame, and no death! As Ladd writes, Jesus’s miracles “were pledges of the life of the eschatological kingdom that will finally mean immortality for the body. The Kingdom of God is concerned not only with men’s souls but with the salvation of the whole man.”[60] Jesus bore witness to the fullness of God’s salvation; work for the common good also serves this function.

Working for the common good goes beyond pursuing what everyone sees as good. Christians should assume that conformity to the will of God is conducive of human flourishing. Thus, pursuing Christlike character and activity should be recognized as a contribution to the common good. Consider the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:26-28) as an example.[61] Sociologist Rodney Stark has shown that 61% of those who created modern science in its founding period were devoted Christians, often working from explicitly Christian motivations based upon the cultural mandate. Thus, obeying God’s command eventuated in far greater good to humanity than anyone could have imagined.[62] More broadly, Stark has joined a chorus of social scientists in arguing that “Christianity led to freedom, capitalism and Western success.”[63] Others have demonstrated how Christianity influenced Western civilization for the common good in healthcare, education, and many other fields.[64] Social scientists have documented numerous positive effects of global Pentecostalism.[65] Undermining the conventional wisdom about the harmful effects of religion, social scientists point out that there is “a huge and growing literature that finds religion to be a reliable source of better mental and even physical health.”[66] Sociologists Christian Smith and Michael Emerson have shown that conservative Christians, motivated by their faith, give more money to others than non-Christians or the nonreligious in America.[67] Social scientists have also been surprised to find that global empirical research demonstrates the value of biblical teachings for producing wealth, justice, and democracy and that the cultural mandate expresses what they call “universal progress culture.”[68]

By working toward the good of all people in society, Christians demonstrate at least four things in the world. First, they demonstrate that God cares for all people, fulfilling Jesus’s directive: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). Second, they demonstrate that they love their neighbors as themselves (Mark 12:28-31), since working for social betterment benefits neighbors as well as self.[69] Third, they demonstrate how God can make concrete differences in the social order, not just in the lives of individuals, and not just about “religious” matters. Fourth, they add weight to their testimony that the pres-ent social order is destined to be replaced by a better one.

Jonathan Edwards long ago modeled a Christian commitment to the common good:

Edwards promoted wholehearted participation in the civil community—regenerate working together with unregenerate to achieve common moral goals. . . . Edwards would not brook a Christian flight from history, or any retreat from a responsible and wholehearted commitment to action within history. . . . Edwards was a model of compassion for the poor and used his pulpit to defend the rights and dignity of society’s marginalized.[70]

Berger perceptively observes, “The two most dynamic religious movements in the contemporary world are what can loosely be called popular Protestantism and resurgent Islam. . . . Pentecostalism . . . is invariably peaceful. . . . here, of course, is a sharp contrast to Islam.”[71] In a world in which radical Islam is convincing people that religion is the problem, Christians have an opportunity to prompt recognition of an alternative view, by being commonly known for promoting the common good.

Notes

1. Interest in the common good fluctuates. For example, some postmodern thinkers reject talk of commonness as a metanarrative because of their conviction that “there is no legitimate way of articulating a basis for our common humanness.” See a discussion of conditions that affect interest in commonness in Richard J. Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), chapter 1. The quote is from page 7.
2. For example, Lindsay demonstrates “empirically that evangelical Christians now populate the halls of power, but most of them have no theological framework for managing the privileges that accompany the mantle of public leadership. . . . In essence, we need a new way of thinking that draws upon the resources religion provides while cultivating among public leaders a deeper commitment to the common good” (D. Michael Lindsay, “A Mighty Fortress: Religious Commitment and Leading for the Common Good,” Journal of Religious Leadership 8 [Fall 2009]: 35-56).
3. See also George Van Pelt Campbell, “Religion and Culture: Challenges and Pros-pects in the Next Generation,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 43 (June 2000): 287-301.
4. This discussion draws from James Bernard Murphy, “Common Good,” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed., Robert Audi, general editor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 161-62.
5. Aristotle said that “man is by nature a political animal,” ανθρωπος φυσει πολιτικον ζωον. See Aristotle, ThePolitics, Translated and with an Introduction Notes and Glossary by Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1:2, 1253a. He meant that they are beings of the “polis,” that is, social beings. Dennis H. Wrong translates Aristotle’s text as “social animals,” in The Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society (New York: Free Press, 1994), 1.
6. The individual and the social represent a continuum, as Murphy states, “Common good includes aggregates of private, individual goods but transcends these aggregates by the unique fulfillment afforded by mutuality, shared activity, and communion of persons” (Murphy, “Common Good,” 161).
7. Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons argued that social order was the most basic issue of sociological theory (The Structure of Social Action [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937], 88). See also the classic treatment of social order as a sociological issue in Wrong, The Problem of Order.
8. The “common good” is a Christian conception. While it has become common currency in the Western world, it was developed by Thomas Aquinas (see Murphy, “Common Good,” 161). Aquinas drew from two primary sources: Aristotle and Christian trinitarianism. Aristotle’s concept of the common advantage served as inspiration for Aquinas’s articulation of the common good, but the common good was given to the world by the Christian faith, and it was founded on and developed from the Bible. Augustine had a concept of the “common good,” but it is significantly different from the contemporary meaning. He saw it as the opposite of owning private possessions and created a dichotomy in which people sought joy and/or self-advancement through proud love of their own possessions or they sought the common good by relinquishing all they had to common ownership. See Raymond Canning, “Common Good,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 219-22.
9. “Human flourishing” includes humans doing well internally, which entails satisfaction in relationships and activities, and externally, which in its fullness includes being treated well by God, others, and nature. The term shalom represents this. For a robust philosophical defense of a Christian view of human flourishing and compared with other philosophical alternatives see Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). For a discussion of human flourishing and a defense of the thesis that God desires human flourishing and that the purpose of Christian doctrine in the New Testament is to promote it, see Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
10. Hans Walter Wolff calls this text a “definition” of humanity (Anthropology of the Old Testament [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974], 159).
11. These two characteristics form the basis of psychologist Lawrence Crabb’s counseling theory, though he formulates the theory without reference to Genesis 1. He sees these as the fundamental human drives, calling them variously the needs for security (love) and significance (meaningful work) or relationship and impact. See Lawrence J. Crabb Jr., Basic Principles of Biblical Counseling (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975); Effective Biblical Counseling (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977); Understanding People (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), esp. chapter 7. Crabb also argues that psychological well-being is related to these needs being met.
12. Cf. Bruce K. Waltke with Charles Yu, An Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 218-19.
13. The labor motif is developed in Genesis 2:4-25, especially 2:15-18.
14. Waltke (Old Testament Theology, 218) explains why the glory of God is a legitimate inference from the text: “Since in that world the king rules under the ultimate rule of his god, the king must be ruling on god’s behalf,” quoting Ian Hart, “Genesis 1:1-2:3 as a Prologue to the Book of Genesis,” Tyndale Bulletin 46 (1995): 318.
15. See, e.g., Allen P. Ross, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988). See also Eugene H. Merrill, Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006), 169-73; Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 218-19; Wolff, Anthropology, 160.
16. Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 219.
17. While human functioning is importantly individual, its full potential cannot be achieved by individuals alone.
18. It might be argued that “let us” in Genesis 1:26 suggests cooperative labor between God and whatever other party is implied. If this is interpreted as a divinely intended opening for Christians later seeing a Trinitarian reference here (whatever the author’s immediate intent), this added reference to cooperative labor would strengthen the case. Even on the “heavenly court” interpretation (see Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 212-15), it could imply a rhetorical allusion to cooperation. Certainly the striking reference to God in the singular and in the plural in 1:26, immediately followed by a reference to humans in the singular (“man”) and in the plural (“male and female”) in 1:27, is intended to draw attention to a parallel between God and humans, and it may well hint that God who works cooperatively is creating humans to work cooperatively, i.e. humans are “like God” in being cooperative beings.
19. Sociologists call this division of skills among humans and the value of cooperative effort the “division of labor.” See Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor Is Society (New York: Macmillan, 1933). Plato saw this as well, and argued that when all do the job they are best suited for, all benefit, and the result would be a flourishing and happy (ευδαιμονια) society. See The Republic of Plato, 2nd ed., trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
20. Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 218.
21. Merrill says it well: “In fact, Adam’s inability to care for all these things prompted the creation of woman. . . . The term helper (‘ezer) suggests that the woman, far from being mere assistant or even servant to the man, was his complement, his other half without which he would be incomplete and incapacitated” (Everlasting Dominion, 106). “The man and the woman complement and complete one another” (Waltke, Theology, 237).
22. Biblical usage of עזר shows that it means to assist in a task, to provide help.
23. Waltke observes, “Karl Barth rightly argues from Genesis 1:26-27 that God endowed humanity with the ability to have social interaction with him and each other as male and female, but he went too far when he argued that that the image of God is a matter of relationship” (Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 217, citing Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3/2 authorized translation by G. T. Thomson [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960], 203). It certainly seems that being relational is a way in which humans are “like God” (Gen. 1:26).
24. On the structure see Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 12-23.
25. Wolff treats it this way (Anthropology of the Old Testament, 166-76).
26. See Wrong, The Problem of Order, 1-13.
27. For a discussion of this in the contemporary American context see James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991). For a discussion of this at the global level see Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon & Schuster, 1996).
28. This is exactly what Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto documents in his own country (The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else [New York: Basic Books, 2003]).
29. See, for example, Lawrence E. Harrison, The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
30. Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, 226, italics added.
31. Robert H. Stein, “Kingdom of God,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 451-54. Merrill stresses that it is “the reigning of God, not so much in its concrete form as kingdom, but in the process itself” (Everlasting Dominion, 129).
32. Walther Eichrodt, Theologyof the Old Testament, 2 vols., trans. J. A. Baker (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), 1:26. See also Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 144-47; and Merrill, Everlasting Dominion, 129-37. George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), says on page 57, “Modern scholarship is quite unanimous in the opinion that the Kingdom of God was the central message of Jesus.” The argument presented here does not, however, require accepting the kingdom of God as the biblical center.
33. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, 1:26, italics his.
34. Merrill, Everlasting Dominion, 42.
35. Ibid.
36. See J. W. Marshall, “Decalogue,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 173-74; K. A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1966); Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972); Gerhard von Rad, Deuteronomy, trans. by Dorothea Barton (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966); Eugene H. Merrill, Deuteronomy (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994); and Peter C. Craigie, Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976).
37. The author calls attention to these concepts with rhyming terms—“tohu and bohu.”
38. See Ross, Creation and Blessing, 101-116. Waltke describes Genesis 1 as “the irruption of God’s kingdom in overcoming the primordial darkness” (Old Testament Theology, 445).
39. Sociologist Peter L. Berger writes about human ordering of the world as an essential task and about the role of religion in that task in The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 3-28.
40. Stein writes, “During the height of theological liberalism the Kingdom of God was understood as God’s rule in the human heart. . . . [historical developments], along with the rediscovery of the eschatological element in the teachings of Jesus, brought about the demise of this interpretation” (“Kingdom of God,” 452). While in the present age it is primarily spiritual, that is not its essential nature.
41. Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 149-51. The Oxford American Dictionary concurs, defining “nation” as “a large community of people of mainly common descent, language, history, etc., usually inhabiting a particular territory and under one government” (Eugene Ehrlich, Stuart Berg Flexner, Gorton Carruth, and Joyce M. Hawkins, eds. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1980], 442).
42. Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 150, emphasis added.
43. Ibid., 405.
44. Ibid., 151. Merrill writes, “The sovereign reign of God through human agency fails miserably . . . . That dominion must await a future day, one inaugurated by the scion of David” (Everlasting Dominion, 648).
45. Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 437; see also 151.
46. Ibid.
47. Waltke writes, “The prophets, beginning with Moses but especially those who experienced the exile, envisioned a new, not a replacement, covenant for all Israel, one that depended entirely upon God” (Old Testament Theology, 438).
48. Stein, “Kingdom of God,” 452-54; Waltke, Old TestamenTheology, 168; Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 57-69.
49. Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 576-84. 
50. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 65; Stein, “Kingdom of God,” 453.
51. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 65. Ladd writes that “the most characteristic and distinctive of the gospel sayings are those which speak of a present coming of the kingdom. Such sayings have no parallel in Jewish teaching or prayers of the period” (ibid.).
52. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 64.
53. Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 150.
54. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 64, italics added.
55. E.g. Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 168-69.
56. Merrill, Everlasting Dominion, 648. While Merrill and Ladd are premillennialists, the argument here depends upon no particular eschatology.
57. F. F. Bruce, Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), 169-70. Poythress concurs: “Isaiah 65:17-25 and Romans 8:21-23 indicate that a transfiguration of the old world is in view” (Vern S. Poythress, The Returning King: A Guide to the Book of Revelation [Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2000], 185).
58. John R. Stott presents Ephesians in this way in God’s New Society: The Message of Ephesians (Downers Grove; IL: InterVarsity, 1979).
59. See Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair, 76-77.
60. Ladd, Theology, 76; also Alan Richardson, An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 97.
61. Some social scientists have argued that the cultural mandate is damaging to human flourishing, e.g., Social Problems: Globalization in the Twenty-First Century, by R. Dean Peterson, Delores F. Wunder, and Harlan L. Mueller (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1999), 180. The argument is problematic, however. The authors suggest that moving away from the West’s cultural mandate toward eastern monism in which humans see themselves as part of nature rather than lords over it might improve the situation (203-4). But they also affirm that “pollution and environmental exploitation” are not limited to the West. “The opposite is in fact the case. Most of the Second World nations are total ecological disasters” (p. 180). Apparently the cultural mandate caused environmental disaster, yet somehow those who lived by it treat the environment better that those who never heard of it!
62. Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts and the End of Slavery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 121-199.
63. Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success (New York: Random House, 2005). This argument was made more indirectly by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (originally published in 1904-05), translated by Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958). Weber’s thesis remains controversial but is followed by many, including Peter L. Berger, The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions about Prosperity, Equality and Liberty (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 99-103.
64. See, for example, Alvin J. Schmidt, Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001); Jonathan Hill, What Has Christianity Ever Done for Us? How It Shaped the Modern World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).
65. Elizabeth E. Brusco shows that conversion to Christian faith in contemporary Columbia is challenging the culture of traditional Latino male sexual practice (The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995]). Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori recently provided a high-quality book-length defense of the thesis that “some of the most innovative social programs in the world are being initiated by fast-growing Pentecostal churches” (Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007], 6).
66. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 31-2. See Kenneth I. Pargament, The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, Practice (New York: Guilford Press, 1997).
67. Christian Smith and Michael O. Emerson with Patricia Snell, Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). The bad news in the book is that only 27.3% of evangelicals give away 10% or more of their after-tax income. Only 0.6% of the nonreligious give 10%.
68. See Lawrence E. Harrison, The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), especially chapters 2 and 4.
69. While working for the common good is implicit in the command to love neighbor as self, seeing it in the context of wider biblical and social concerns strengthens the case by providing further supports for it.
70. Gerald R. McDermott, One Holy and Happy Society: The Public Theology of Jonathan Edwards (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 96, 100, 101.
71. Peter L. Berger, “Religion and Global Civil Society,” in Religion in Global Civil Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 16, 18.