Sealed with an Oath Quotes

“1. God was not obligated to create humanity in the first place. 2. God was not bound to enter into covenant with humanity. 3. The covenant (of works) was necessary, a reality flowing from the nature of God.38 4. The reward is always of God’s goodness, and the language of merit, in the sense of earning/deserving the reward, is held to be inappropriate. 5. God gave sufficient grace to Adam for him to keep the covenant if Adam willed so.”
― Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God's Unfolding Purpose

“Sin has thus radically disrupted God’s universal purpose, so much so that he must undo his creation and begin again.28”
― Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God's Unfolding Purpose

“The intent may be that we are not to understand the relationship with Adam to be a běrît in the same sense that the word has in its other occurrences in the Book of Genesis. In the other instances where the word is used of a divine–human relationship, it connotes the assurance of a divine promise of blessing that the human participant did not previously possess.”
― Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God's Unfolding Purpose

“By not speaking of the relationship between God and the first human beings as a covenant, Genesis has perhaps implied that there was no need for formally binding commitments before the time of human disobedience and divine punishment. Those events have imperilled the relationship on both sides. God cannot trust human beings, and human beings cannot trust God. So now God makes a formal and solemn binding commitment to humanity.”
― Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God's Unfolding Purpose

“The story of the fall brings to a bitter end the harmony that was the hallmark of God’s creative activity.”
― Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God's Unfolding Purpose

“Biblical theology is principally concerned with the overall theological message of the whole Bible. It seeks to understand the parts in relation to the whole and, to achieve this, it must work with the mutual interaction of the literary, historical, and theological dimensions of the various corpora, and with the interrelationships of these within the whole canon of Scripture.”
― Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God's Unfolding Purpose