I do not see the need for a biological seed of the near of kin to be purely a demand of inheritance laws, as there is no need of a biological connection to facilitate this under law, as I think you point out above. This equation of “name” with property is a conflation of the multiple facets of the function of the levirate. The law might have required merely the upkeep of the widow under standing statutes, as under the creation ordinances. The wellbeing of the name is already preserved in the progeny of the remaining kin. What I wish to examine is given these established conditions, why did God ordain the levirate? The property might have been adjudicated to pass collectively to the near of kin. To view the siring of heirs as a simply a means of the disposition of property is a uni-dimensional view that I do not feel the text warrants. If the man has no property to dispose of? There is no property test for the levirate. This is one of the limitations of the standard reformed interpretation and it seems strained to me to avoid the more natural conclusion that the levirate was at least in part to establish the biological stock of the line of the man and widow in Israel, showing therein a genetic understanding of covenant that compliments the spiritual.
Further, does Paul have need to make recourse to analogies of biological participation (which grafting is) if grafting is purely spiritual? Adoption might suffice for such a conception. Adoption and grafting are not cognate, as one is a forensic disposition of lineage, and the other is a co-mingling of essence. In this sense, we might think of forensic adjudication as two-fold: in the one sense we are adjudicated righteous by virtue of participation in Christ, and adopted as heirs, and in the other sense we are adjudicated to participate in Israel by virtue of the forensic disposition that we are fleshly Israel as well. That this fleshly understanding of Israel identity commonly obtained is shown in the Baptizer’s critique of Israelites reliance on a form of biological salvation, very similar to Christian Identity, where they simply substitute their race for 1st century Israelites -an admitted heresy among Kinists.
To me, this unity-in-duality is a richer view of covenant, perhaps (and one would hope) not at all novel, and avoids the requirement of viewing the entire covenant with Israel analogically or as a type, but rather enables us to view is as uni-directional promises of both a physical and spiritual dimension to a people constituted both physically and spiritually. This comports more readily with known ethnographic evidence that Israel was indeed constituted as an ethnostate, whith very severe strictures regulating access to the covenant, not this “easy believe-ism” that we are so often told regulated covenant access.
In such a way the physicality and spirituality of Israel are both preserved. This to me comports far better with the idea that the Jew is “first” according to Paul, even in the renewed covenant, and that in circumcision there is “much” advantage. If Israel is only belief, then Israel cannot ever be lost, and Christ therefore is seeking what is already found. This is a necessary conclusion due to the doctrine of election in which the elect are so from everlasting. In the temporal covenant, Christ certainly was required to save his sheep. He was not also required to seek them, if they were “found” already by virtue of the belief bestowed on them as a gift through grace. Only a physical, temporal Israel can be sought. This is no circumlocution.
If physical Israel is naught, then the gentile and the Jew are equal co-heirs in every respect. There can be no “first” among “twins.” Israel is not “first” by virtue of belief, for she rejected her Savior and prophets, whom the gentiles accepted far more readily. Indeed, the Gospel spread like wildfire among the gentiles. Israel is first by birth, as in primogeniture. Because it is a “house” (or household) established by a father (Abraham) and sustained by a spiritual Father (Jehovah). The existence of the spiritual Father does not negate the existence or importance of the carnal father, just as we are charged with obedience to our carnal fathers, though our Father in heaven is greater by far. He delegates temporal title of “progenitor” to human fathers, though he is the Author of life. This dilemma of “first among equals” is eased by refusing to view covenant uni-dimensionally.
Christ as the fulfillment of Israel, who was only sent to Israel, seemed to distinguish Israel in a biological sense when he refers to the daughter of the Canaanite woman as a “dog” (a colloquial epithet) in an instance during which which she is demonstrating faith greater than that of many Israelites. From this example and others, we may surmise that there is a genetico-cultural dimension to Israel that is not abrogated by the supremacy or priority of spirit in covenant. It may be that exclusively spiritual view of covenant has difficulty with the consistently genetic mode of expression in which covenant is framed throughout scripture.
Thanks for your thoughtful response as we try to build a Kinist theory of covenant that answers all important objections. It should be noted however that Kinism does not rely on covenantal arguments to support its positions, and in that sense is very different from Christian Identity, nor does it deny equal theoretical access to salvation, or that the elect have been drawn from a multitude of biological “nations.”
