This is from an X post from October, 2024, responding to this Paul Miller talk:
Paul Miller’s talk was maddening. It’s not that everything he said is false, it’s that he managed to mix error into every single sentence, even those that included hints of the truth.
I’ll limit myself to commenting on one aspect of his talk. I thought @douglaswils made some good points about the problems with appealing to the Noahic covenant as the basis of a religiously neutral public square. I want to add to his points here.
There is no reason to think the Noahic covenant is a “common grace covenant” or a “natural law covenant.” First, appealing to Scripture (Genesis 6-9), especially a portion of Scripture that most unbelievers today reject and mock, in order to establish the principle that we should *not* use Scripture in the public square is contradictory and unhelpful. Miller’s decision to use Scripture up to Genesis chapter 9, and then ignore the rest of it, is arbitrary. He basically cuts off the branch he’s sitting on.
But more importantly, the Noahic covenant is a distinctively Christian and redemptive covenant, and cannot be separated from the overarching covenantal framework of Scripture. The Noahic covenant is based on sacrifice (Gen. 8:20ff), a sacrifice that points ahead to the work of Christ. It is one of the “covenants of promise” (Eph. 2:12). The rainbow visible to us images the rainbow around the throne of God in heaven (Rev 4:3); that rainbow does not prevent God from pouring out historical and eschatological judgments on people from his throne. But of course, the rainbow itself – literally a “warbow” – also points ahead to the cross in that it is symbolically aimed at heaven rather than earth; the rainbow is a sign that God will ultimately propitiate his own wrath against man’s sin, so the Noahic covenant is a gospel covenant. Yes, the Noahic covenant includes a pledge that God will preserve natural order (8:22) and social order (9:5-6), but this is just another example of God ruling all things for the sake of his church (Eph. 1:22-23). It’s debatable whether or not the state is a creation ordinance or a Noahic ordinance, but what is not debatable is that the magistrate who holds the sword is God’s deacon and therefore has an obligation to wield the sword in accordance with God’s justice, as an avenger of God’s wrath (Rom. 13:1ff). Historically, Christians have viewed Noah’s ark as a type of the church, the rain of the flood as a type of baptism, and have pointed out that the household saved on the ark was a believing family (1 Peter 3:20ff). In other words, it is simply false to say it is a common grace covenant. And so on. The Noahic covenant has many facets, but claiming it establishes a religiously neutral public square that is free from the claims of Christ’s lordship and Scripture’s authority has to be one of the most asinine and idiotic readings of Scripture ever invented.
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