Last Lord's Day was sad as I finished my fifty-one sermons on Genesis, but I am glad to begin Exodus this coming Lord's Day. I've been preparing voraciously.

One resource I found and purchased is Theodoret of Cyrus' (393–460), Quaestiones in octateuchum (Questions on the Octateuch), a series of questions and answers on difficult portions of the first eight books of the Old Testament (Genesis–Ruth). As I've blogged before, I make it a practice to read at least one patristic exposition of every text I preach on, if available. Thankfully I have two on Exodus, Theodoret as well as Origen, to go along with my perennial favorite Jewish exegete, Nahum Sarna, and Brevard Childs' work.

As a side note, I went back and read some portions of Theodoret on Genesis and was happy to find some features that are in other patristic authors on the situation in the Garden. All the major strands of what our forefathers called "The Covenant of Works" are in the patristics. Here are a few references I have found in my studies over the past couple of years, which I hope to incorporate into an article someday on the incohate doctrine of the covenant of works in Belgic Confession article 14's language of "the commandment of life":

An example from the western church is Augustine of Hippo, who wrote in The City of God (12.21):

Man, on the other hand, whose nature was to be a mean between the angelic and bestial, He created in such sort, that if he remained in subjection to His Creator as his rightful Lord, and piously kept His commandments, he should pass into the company of the angels, and obtain, without the intervention of death, a blessed and endless immortality; but if he offended the Lord his God by a proud and disobedient use of his free will, he should become subject to death, and live as the beasts do the slave of appetite, and doomed to eternal punishment after death.

Augustine teaches, first, that there was life beyond the earthly life (“he should pass into the company of the angels, and obtain . . . a blessed and endless immortality), and second, that this was obtained by obedience to God’s commandments.

From the eastern church, two witnesses stand out. First, Theodoret of Cyrus (393–460) wrote soon before his death a series of Questions of the Octateuch. In question twenty-four on Genesis he asked, “Why did God plant the Garden of Paradise from which he would soon exclude Adam as a result of his sin?” Among the reasons given, Theodoret said, “Also, the Righteous Arbiter had to set the prize of victory before the athletes of virtue.” He went on to ask about the two trees mentioned in the Garden, saying, “Adam was set a trial with regard to the latter [tree of the knowledge of good and evil], whereas the tree of life was proposed as his prize for keeping the commandment.”

We learn from Theodoret first, that there was something more for Adam beyond life in the earthly Paradise of Eden, his “prize,” and second, that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a trial by his Adam’s obedience was the means of gaining the “prize.”

A second eastern witness is John of Damascus (676–749), known as the last of the church fathers. In his An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, he said,

When therefore He had furnished his nature with free-will, He imposed a law on him, not to taste of the tree of knowledge . . . And with this command He gave the promise that, if he should preserve the dignity of the soul by giving the victory to reason, and acknowledging his Creator and observing His command, he should share eternal blessedness and live to all eternity, proving mightier than death: but if forsooth he should subject the soul to the body, and prefer the delights of the body, comparing himself in ignorance of his true dignity to the senseless beasts, and shaking off his Creator’s yoke, and neglecting His divine injunction, he will be liable to death and corruption, and will be compelled to labour throughout a miserable life. For it was no profit to man to obtain incorruption while still untried and unproved, lest he should fall into pride and under the judgment of the devil . . . It was necessary, therefore, that man should first be put to the test (for man untried and unproved would be worth nothing), and being made perfect by the trial through the observance of the command should thus receive incorruption as the prize of his virtue. For being intermediate between God and matter he was destined, if he kept the command, to be delivered from his natural relation to existing things and to be made one with God’s estate, and to be immoveably established in goodness, but, if he transgressed and inclined the rather to what was material, and tore his mind from the Author of his being, I mean God, his fate was to be corruption, and he was to become subject to passion instead of passionless, and mortal instead of immortal, and dependent on connection and unsettled generation.

We learn from John that 1) there was something greater for Adam than life in the Garden, 2) that God gave a law to Adam, 3) that the promise of eternal life was attached to this commandment, 4) that obedience was the means to receive eternal life, 4) and that this obedience was tested in the Garden.