Kline, Meredith. Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations For a Covenantal Worldview. (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006).

Meredith Kline offers a compelling account of a covenantal worldview in the eschatological movement towards Christ’s consummation. A compelling argument in his discussion revolves around the concept of Sabbath and God’s day of rest as it relates to the ordering of Creation and the establishment of God’s covenant with Creation. Kline states, “God sets for his creative acts within the pictorial framework of a Sabbath-crowned week and by this sabbatical pattern he identifies himself as Omega, the One for whom all things are and were created , The Lord worthy to receive glory and honor and praise.”

The role of God as Creator is often focused on the attribute of God being the beginning of all. The consummation of Christ is typically referred to in eschatological terms centering on the act of final redemption when Christ comes at last to fully restore Creation. Kline discusses God as author and finisher, not chronologically within some unknown future millennium, but on the seventh day of all creational existence. Honing in on the words “Let there be” and “It is finished” the concept of God as “the last” or “finisher” was established long before we reach the debate on pre, post, or panmillennialism. God’s glory is established before the need of redemption entered the human scope of experience and is simply characterized by the rest and pleasure God took in enjoying his creation on the seventh day. The reality of the Sabbath is the reality of God’s glory present before the fall and redemption.

The name of Creator was proclaimed to be consummator. Contrary to a human understanding of rest as a wearied workman recouping his strength, God rested in his creation by literally occupying it and enjoying, or taking pleasure, in his completed work. Kline provides the metaphor of Enthronement to help us understand how the royal nature of rest follows the royal nature of work. Calling Creation a “new theatre for God’s majesty” Kline defines the nature of God’s resting in creation as an occupation of a “cosmic palace” or the conducting of a “royal session”. Such majestic and royal terms undoubtedly call to mind the sovereign and kingly nature of a Godhead who merely fiats into existence an entire pattern and hierarchy of dominion.

This pattern and hierarchy crescendos ultimately to God’s supreme dominion over creation exercised the seventh day of creation, the Sabbath. Days one through three of creation depict the origin of the vast spheres over which authority is established while days four through six present rulers of each creational sphere in their proper turn. The movement from day one through day six creates a hierarchical pattern of dominion ascending to the consecration of the Sabbath as a capstone to the structural dominion over creation. Kline states, “The pattern of ascending dominion in the creation record is thus designed to teach the ultimate truth that all created reality is under the Creator’s lordship, that God’s kingdom embraces all creation.”