Creation/Cultural Mandate - How fundemental?

[Stope]

I have been reading a bit about the Creation/Cultural Mandate, I find it very compelling!!!!!!! It resonates with me, and I find that it could be a compelling reality for me to share with non-believers as well, but that said, Im not sure how it all connects. Please see below and fill in any gaps, or correct any wrong thinking I might have:

BEFORE the fall was work and creativity. This is compelling. Adam was called to create family and create (name animals), cultivate the earth... If this continued uninterrupted then life would be blissful and God would delight in us as we delight in Him and the gifts he gave us...
---Am I right so far?

Then enters sin, the fall, selfishness... So their issue is personal sin and punishment and hell, but ALSO, we have broken and twisted the creation/culture mandate...
---My questions:
1. Jesus' atoning death addresses hell and my sins
2. But what does Jesus' life and death do to address the corrupted creation/cultural mandate?
3. Are there another important aspects here?

 

[earl40]

Jesus In my most humble opinion addressed the moral problem of sin, and gives spiritual life to the moral agents who fell (people). We at church just went into this "Creation/Cultural Mandate" study the past 10 weeks and what I found is the idea we Joe Blows are to "redeem" things (creation/culture aka C/C). So are we really called to do this as believers? If I,as a Christian, make a pair of shoes are those shoes now redeemed Christian shoes?

What I think is wrong in the thinking of redeeming the CC is that it mixes up the idea of the effects of The Gospel on believers (which I believe is real) with some type of magical formula of changing non-personal things. Lets face this, all the things one day will be redeemed, and that day is not today but on the last day, when we arrive with Jesus to a new earth where heaven dwells.

 

[MW]

It is important for understanding morality. E.g., marriage, work and Sabbath, etc. It is dangerous when it is confused with redemption. There is only one Redeemer.

 

[TylerRay]

The older Reformed commentators don't see it as a mandate, but rather as a benediction. Note that the passage itself describes it in that way: "And God blessed them, and God said to them ..." This blessing, or benediction, is descriptive of the normative state which God created man to be in. It does have implications for what we are to do, and how we are to behave toward creation, but it is not a mandate, properly speaking.

Poole (for context, the debate in Poole's day was whether the "be fruitful and multiply" part was a command. The Dominion Mandate concept had not yet been conceived of. Nevertheless, both clauses make up the whole, so his arguments are still relevant):

Question. Whether this be a command obliging all men to marriage and procreation? So the Hebrew doctors think. It may be thus resolved:

1. It is a command obliging all men so far as not to suffer the extinction of mankind: thus it did absolutely bind Adam and Eve, as also Noah, and his sons and their wives, after the Flood.

2. It doth not oblige every particular person to marry, as appears both from the example of the Lord Jesus, who lived and died in an unmarried state, and from his commendation of those who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God, Matthew 19:12; and from St. Paul’s approbation of virginity, 1 Corinthians 7:1, 1 Corinthians 7:8, 1 Corinthians 7:26-27, 1 Corinthians 7:32, &c.

3. It is here rather a promise or benediction than a command, as appears both from Genesis 2:22, where the same words are applied to the brute beasts, who are not subject to a command; and because if this were a command, it would equally oblige every man to exercise dominion over fishes and fowls, &c., which is absurd. It is therefore a permission rather than a command, though it be expressed in the form of a command, as other permissions frequently are, as Genesis 2:16 Deu 14:4.

Gill:

And God blessed them,.... The man and the woman he had made, with all the blessings of nature and Providence; with all the good things of life; with his presence, and with communion with himself in a natural way, through the creatures; and particularly with a power of procreating their species, as follows,

and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth: if this is not an express command, as the Jews understand it, for marriage and procreation of children, it seems to be more than a bare permission; at least it is a direction and an advice to what was proper and convenient for the increase of mankind, and for the filling of the earth with inhabitants, which was the end of its being made, Isaiah 45:18. This shows that marriage is an ordinance of God, instituted in paradise, and is honourable; and that procreation is a natural action, and might have been, and may be performed without sin,

and subdue it; the earth; not that it was in the hands of others, who had no right to it, and to be conquered and taken out of their hands; but is to be understood of their taking possession, and making use of it; of their tilling the land, and making it subservient to their use:

and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth; which was giving them an universal and unlimited dominion over all the creatures; of which see an enumeration in Psalm 8:6.

Matthew Henry has a good perspective on the matter. Notice that he implies that it is a description of the position that God put man in:

God gave to man, when he had made him, a dominion over the inferior creatures, over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air. Though man provides for neither, he has power over both, much more over every living thing that moveth upon the earth, which are more under his care and within his reach. God designed hereby to put an honour upon man, that he might find himself the more strongly obliged to bring honour to his Maker. This dominion is very much diminished and lost by the fall; yet God’s providence continues so much of it to the children of men as is necessary to the safety and support of their lives, and God’s grace has given to the saints a new and better title to the creature than that which was forfeited by sin; for all is ours if we are Christ’s, 1 Co. 3:22 .

Earl pinpointed the trouble with the "dominion mandate" idea: redeeming things. You won't find anything in the Bible about our bringing Christ's redemption to bear on culture or on the natural world. Don't hear me wrong--we are to apply God's law in all of our relations, but it not soteriological or redemptive.