Herodotus begins his famous Histories by saying, “Herodotus of Halicarnassus here presents his research so that human events do not fade with time. May the great and wonderful deeds—some brought forth by the Hellenes, others by the barbarians—not go unsung.”[1] He asserts that there is something worth relating about human events and specifically human action. This sensible view of history changes, however, with the knowledge that “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”[2] Immanuel is a historical figure. This view of history sees human action in the context of divine action, which often included the formation of a covenant. A covenant is relational first and foremost, involving the forging of a kinship, not merely a transactional exchange. Therefore, a covenantal view of history sees it as a story of God continually reaching out to bind the human race to Himself. St. Augustine in his City of God mirrors the covenant pattern in delineating the ages of man. The two rival cities originated in Biblical times, times “in which men living according to the spirit were not lacking.”[3] Augustine delineates the different ages by such men: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Christ, also the major covenant figures of Scripture. While history looks to the past to learn about the present, covenantal history contextualizes the present in light of the Lord of History, a Savior who keeps his promises.

Augustine begins expounding on the ages of man by describing the way he divides mankind:

            On one side are those who live according to man; on the other, those who live according to God. And I have said that, in a                       

            deeper sense, we may speak of two cities or two human societies, the destiny of the one being an eternal kingdom under God

            while the doom of the other is eternal punishment along with the Devil. . . . For the moment, therefore, I must deal with the

            course of the history of the two cities from the time when children were born to the first couple until the day when men shall

            beget no more.[4]

He then dives into Scripture, tracing the origins of these two societies from Genesis on. Augustine chooses to begin this enterprise at “the time when children were born to the first couple,” suggesting that, in his view, the human drama began not so much with Adam and Eve as with Cain and Abel. Their story shows the immediate, drastic consequences of the Fall. Adam’s covenant with Eve, whom he calls “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” and their constant intimacy with the Creator are sabotaged by sin, which plays out in the story of their children, when envy gives rise to murder.[5]God’s pronouncement that He will “put enmity between [the serpent] and the woman, between [its] seed and her seed” is the first delineation of the two opposing forces that shape the rest of salvation history, that Augustine calls the City of God and the City of Man.[6] When Eve bore Seth, she said, “God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel.” [7]Immediately following, Adam’s bloodline is listed from Seth until Noah.[8] While both Seth and Cain are biologically sons of Eve, Seth is the seed of the woman and Cain is the seed of the serpent; they grow together like the weeds and the wheat until the time of Noah, a period Augustine designates as the first age.[9]

The seed of the woman continues with Noah, who is saved through water along with his family.[10] Once the Flood passed, God makes a covenant with him, reforging the relationship that had been lost in the Fall.[11] This establishes a pattern that continues for the rest of Scripture, of God’s covenants with humanity that are constantly broken by human sin. Augustine notes that “when [Noah’s] second son . . . had sinned against his father, he was not cursed in his own person but in that of his son.”[12] While his is the seed of the serpent, the seed of the woman is the covenant bloodline, continuing from Noah to Abraham through Shem, who had been blessed.

With Abraham, the covenant bloodline grows beyond a family; when he hears the call of the Lord, he and Sarah also bring his nephew’s family and “the persons that they had gotten in Haren.”[13] God establishes a covenant with Abraham on three separate occasions, the last after the sacrifice of Isaac, the “son of the free woman through promise.”[14] In St. Paul’s reflection, Sarah and Isaac correspond to the covenant of the heavenly Jerusalem, for the Lord said to Abraham that “through Isaac shall your descendants be named.”[15] The theme of promise is one Augustine picks up on: “We have seen the promises which God made to Abraham—to be the father, first, of the Jewish race according to the flesh, and, second, of all nations who were to embrace the faith. The development in history of the City of God will show how these promises were kept.”[16] This is central to the covenantal view of history. Not only does humanity have a relationship with God Who has providential rule over history, but fundamentally He is a God who keeps His promises. The covenant bloodline passes from Isaac to his son Jacob, renamed Israel, and on through his son Judah especially, in the prophesy that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs.”[17]

The age of Abraham ends with Moses, and in this next age comes the partial fulfilment of the promises made to Abraham. The covenant bloodline has again grown, for the twelve sons of Jacob are now twelve tribes, a chief reason for Pharaoh’s alarm and the Israelites’ enslavement.[18] Augustine says, “So great a hero did Moses become that he freed his people from the yoke of slavery, or, rather, God wrought through him what He had promised to Abraham.”[19] Again, here arises the theme of the promise-keeping God, operating collaboratively with men. Israel passes from slavery into the desert, where God forms the Mosaic covenant on Mount Sinai.[20] This covenant is broken by the Israelites’ idolatry, a pattern that continues through the book of Judges and into the time of the kings. After Saul loses the favor of God, David is anointed, beginning “the period of mature manhood in the history of God’s people, following the period of adolescence, so to speak, which lasted from Abraham to David.”[21]

The figure of Samuel, who anointed Saul and David, marks the next age. Augustine elaborates, “There is a period which begins with the prophesies of Samuel and continues through the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity (which Jeremias had foretold) and ends with the rebuilding of the Temple, after the Israelites came home. This period is known as the ‘Age of the Prophets’ . . . they prefigured, in some fashion, many things touching the City of God and the kingdom of heaven, and sometimes actually prophesied.”[22] He notes that, despite the annals of the kings, the Scriptures concerning this age are more “concerned with prophesy than with history.”[23] As an example, Augustine quotes the passage from Jeremiah, where God promises to form a new covenant with Israel and write it upon their hearts.[24] While many prophets, Jeremiah included, remind Israel of the existing Mosaic covenant, foretelling the inevitable disaster if they remain unrepentant, they also are messengers of hope. Interestingly, Augustine considers David a prophet, a distinction that would give David the three-fold ministry of priest, prophet, and king.[25] To David God makes another extraordinary promise, that one of his lineage will reign forever and will be distinguished as a son of God.[26] While that promise seemed near-impossible as the kingdom was broken and its people exiled, Augustine says that “[God] made use of temporal chastisements to test the handful of loyal believers He had among them, and to render alert those followers He was to have later on among all those peoples for whose sake he was planning to make good His second promise.”[27] The covenant bloodline, now grown to an entire nation, is purified and becomes the faithful remnant, showing how God works even through such catastrophic events of history in order to fulfill His promises. The period of silence until the coming of Christ parallels the time before the calling of Samuel when the word of God was rare; seemingly all the Jews had was a shattered kingdom under foreign rule.[28] The Lord, however, brought forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, the promised Davidic king.[29]

History forever changed when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten Son from the Father.”[30] God entered history. While He had never been distant, in the Incarnation He united Himself intimately with human joys and sorrows, experiencing the human story even as He was writing it. This moment was so radical that G. K. Chesterton designates this as the second half of history, a new creation of the world.[31] St. John continues, saying that “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,” a fulfillment of the promise of divine adoption given to David.[32] The vision of history changes, for God has now become man and men are now children of God. What was once a covenant bloodline from a single man has become universal. Christ came to ransom the human heart oppressed by sin and death, and in doing so He established a new covenant in His blood through the Last Supper, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the coming of the promise of the Father.[33]

Covenantal history contextualizes the present in light of a God who keeps his promises, but it also provides hope for the future through Christ’s final promise: “I am with you always, to the close of the age.”[34] Humanity’s present situation must be viewed through these words which are living, active, and deeply meaningful.[35] Christ ascended into heaven, but He is still at work changing the hearts of all the actors in the human story that let Him. The pilgrim City of God, to use Augustine’s language, is still awaiting the promised New Jerusalem and the final, eternal covenant. However, this is joyful expectancy, for God has proven Himself trustworthy and the whole of salvation history attests to this. Therefore, the children of the promise can “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”[36] Even the tragedies of human history take on a new significance, for they are permitted by the Divine Author Who experienced great suffering Himself. Ultimately, the person looking through the lens of covenant history sees “the shape of a Cross etched on the history of the world.”[37] History is different for God having entered it.

[1] Herodotus, The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, trans. Andrea L. Purvis, ed. Robert B. Strassler (New York: Anchor Books, 2009), 3.

[2] Galatians 4:4-5 (RSV-2CE).

[3] Augustine, City of God, trans. Gerald G. Walsh, Demetrius B. Zema, Grace Monahan, and Daniel J. Honan, ed. Vernon J. Bourke (New York: Image Books, 2014), 366.

[4] Augustine, 309-10.

[5] Genesis 2:23.

[6] Genesis 3:15.

[7] Genesis 4:25.

[8] Genesis 5.

[9] Cf. Matthew 13:30; Augustine, 366.

[10] Cf. 1 Peter 3:20.

[11] Genesis 9:9.

[12] Augustine, 351.

[13] Genesis 12:5.

[14] Cf. Genesis 12, 15, 22; Galatians 4:23.

[15] Galatians 4:26; Genesis 21:12.

[16] Augustine, 367.

[17] Genesis 49:10.

[18] Exodus 1:7-11.

[19] Augustine, 364.

[20] Exodus 19:5-6.

[21] Augustine, 365.

[22] Ibid., 367.

[23] Ibid., 368, 370.

[24] Jeremiah 31:31-33; Cf. Augustine, 371.

[25] Augustine, 373; Cf. 2 Samuel 6:17, Psalm 110:4.

[26] 2 Samuel 7:12-14.

[27] Augustine, 369-70.

[28] 1 Samuel 3:1.

[29] Isaiah 11:1.

[30] John 1:14.

[31] G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (New York: Image Books, 1955), 171.

[32] John 1:12.

[33] Luke 22:20; Acts 1:4.

[34] Matthew 28:20.

[35] Cf. Hebrews 4:12.

[36] Cf. Galatians 4:28; Hebrews 10:23.

[37] Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 2006), Amazon, loc. 1939.