Berkouwer:

While we differ from Barth, we shall have to face up to a further question: Does the interrelation of the law and the Gospel have only a "salvation-historical" aspect, or does it have reference to the “lapsarian” situation o[ man’s own guilt and lostness? Can we speak of a prolapsarian state in which there was a "law"? Was there a "nomological" existence of man apart from and even prior to the distinction of the law and the Gospel. If there was, can we search there, perhaps, for the fundamental structure of what it means to be a "man"? R. Schippers, in weighing all of these questions, has affirmed that there was a law in man’s "prolapsarian state," and that that law was there apart from the Gospel!⁵¹ At the same time, we no longer may speak of this law in abstraction. Schippers’ statement has reference to the creation of God which must certainly be distinguished from man’s guilt and fallenness and therefore from the Gospel of God’s grace which saves.

It stands to reason that we may not draw conclusions concerning the relation of the law and the Gospel or build a case for the "priority" of the law on such a basis as this. Man’s original life under God’s rule cannot be regarded, for even a moment, apart from God’s love and communion. Within that communion man was subjected to God’s holy and good command; furthermore. because of that communion the commandment was never an impersonal or a statutory rule. God’s commandment expresses his lordship over life. Therefore, any discussion of the usus legus, in its various dimensions, is only conceivable in terms of this absolute goodness of God’s commandment for creaturely man. The fact that this accent was sounded so frequently in Reformation and post-Reformation times is no evidence of the darkening of the Gospel, and is no recognition of a "legal order" above or before the "order of grace." What we see in this accent is only the enigmatic nature of guilt in the face of God’s loving communion or the goodness of his rule.

Because of that fact we can never construe an antithesis between the covenants of "works" and "grace." We err if we interpret this distinction as though God’s original covenant had to do with our work or our achievement or our fulfillment of his law, while the later covenant of grace has reference to the pure gift of his mercy apart from all our works. If we assume this we are compelled to say that God’s original relation to man was strictly "legal," or that the structure of that relation was determined by man’s merit. In that case, we lose sight of the fact that man’s obedience to God’s command can never be different from a thankful response to God’s own fellowship. Therefore S. G. DeGraaf has rightly said that the concept which sees God’s favor only at the end of man’s way of obedience is open to serious dispute. Man participates in God’s favor, communion and love already at the very beginning. In that fact we see the awful reality of his guilt and apostasy.

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Dillistone:

Chapter Eight

FEDERALISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

I

IN the Reformed Confessions of the sixteenth century Covenant-Terminology is seldom used. In fact there is only one example of the Covenant-concept occupying a place of prominence and that is in the title of the Second Scots Confession of 1580. This is designated the “National Covenant,” and for the first time we find a symbol of common agreement being described in this way. Probably the Old Testament record of covenants between the people and their king gave the necessary precedent for such a use.

But, although there are few explicit references to the covenant, the general Church-doctrine of Calvin was being warmly embraced. Nowhere, perhaps, does the true voice of the Reformation ring out with more joyful assurance than in the First Scots Confession of 1560. In this, the most notable of the early Reformed Confessions, there is no attempt to minimize the importance which the Church holds in the providential working of God in history. The Church is the community brought into being by God’s Promise. In the face of man’s defection, the Confession asserts, God made to Adam one most joyful promise, a promise which was made more and more clear and repeated from time to time. But those who have embraced the promise with joy, constitute the one Kirk of all the ages, a Kirk which God has preserved, instructed, multiplied, honored, adorned, and from death called to life throughout the history of mankind. This Kirk is distinguished from the rest of society by the three notes which had already become famous–the true preaching of the Word of God, the right administration of the Sacraments, and ecclesiastical discipline uprightly dispensed. These are the marks of the visible Church in the world. But the source and spring of the whole life of the Church is God’s Promise by which He called the new community into being and by which He renews and restores it from age to age.

With the turn of the century a significant change appears. The Covenant-conception begins to occupy an increasingly, important place in Reformed theology but it is interpreted in a way markedly different from that of earlier Reformed teaching. The new theory of the covenant comes to clear expression in the Irish Articles of 1615. First, reference is made to the Covenant of the Law ingrafted in man’s heart at creation whereby God did promise unto him everlasting life upon condition that he performed entire and perfect obedience to His commandments: but seeing that men broke this covenant of the Law, it was necessary for a second covenant to be inaugurated, the covenant of which Christ is the Mediator and whose purpose is man’s salvation. This is the framework which now receives ever fuller elaboration:– the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace, each in its way a contract between God and man, each promising man life and salvation upon definite conditions. The outstanding difference between the covenants is to be found in the fact that whereas the first demanded unquestioning obedience, the second demanded unqualified faith. It is the same God who made each covenant and it may be assumed, therefore, that the purpose and general structure of each covenant is the same. In other words God is a God who enters into contract with men, who binds Himself to bestow blessings if only they will fulfill certain conditions. The supreme mark of His grace is that when men failed to keep the first covenant, He did not abandon them entirely. Instead He made a second compact, one moreover which might seem at first sight to demand less of man than the first. Obedience having proved impossible, obedience was replaced by faith. So the dialectic between Law and Gospel which Calvin sought to maintain is broken and instead we have two successive eras, in one of which God deals with man in one way, in the second of which He deals with him in another. In all this there is a serious danger of losing the vision of the One personal Living God who at all times and under all circumstances deals with man both in judgment and in grace.

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Stam:

5. SHOULD WE SPEAK OF A COVENANT OF WORKS?

Most Reformed explainers agree that God established the covenant already in paradise, before man’s fall into sin. Many of them make a distinction between the covenant before and after the fall, however. Often this is formulated as follows: before the fall, the covenant was a covenant of works, but after the fall it became a covenant of grace. This implies that before the fall man had to earn something, or at least show himself worthy of obtaining more than he had. But now, after the fall, since he lost the ability to earn anything, man can only live by grace.

Underlying all this is an important question. Has our relationship with God ever been built on human works, achievement, or merit? Did our works in the past and do they in the present in any way determine the relationship itself? Our works–or the lack of them–indeed influence the relationship with God and the way it functions at a given moment, but is it ever based on our works or always solely on his grace towards us?

Covenant of works

The expression covenant of works is not found in Scripture. If the Bible draws any distinction between works and grace, it is that we cannot be saved by our works, the works of the law, but only by faith, through grace. This line of thinking is followed by the apostle Paul over against the Judaizers, for example in Romans 3 and Ephesians 2. It is all a matter of grace, so that no man will boast before the LORD (Rom 3:27; 1 Cor 1:31).

It would appear that the term covenant of works was not used until after the Reformation. Some of the underlying elements (such as the probationary command and the idea of freedom of choice) are mentioned by the early church fathers and the Reformers. Augustine called the relationship which Adam had with God a covenant (pactum). Calvin stressed, like Augustine, that salvation is a work of God alone, through grace, and that this was so also under the old covenant: ". . . the covenant by which they [the Israelites] were reconciled to the Lord was founded on no merits of their own, but solely on the mercy of God who called them" (Institutes, I, 370).

In the time after the Reformation the doctrine concerning the covenant was further developed by men such as Bullinger and Olevianus. The idea of a covenant of works now also made its entry. (L. Berkhof gives a review of this development in his Systematic Theology, pp. 211ff.)

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Venema:

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE COVENANT OF WORKS.

THE THREATENING–IMPORT OF THE TERM DEATH THE NATURAL CONDITION O F MAN VIEWED IN REFERENCE TO GOD AND TO MAN HIMSELF THE ACCIDENTAL CONDITION A MANIFESTATION OR EXTERNAL SIGN OF THE NATURAL–THE SABBATH IN WHAT SENSE SANCTIFIED BY GOD–COVENANT DEFINED–ITS FORM DIFFERENT KINDS OF COVENANTS COVENANT OF WORKS–ITS FOUNDATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES–OBJECTIONS.

2. The threatening with which the prohibition was sanctioned is contained in these words, “In the clay that thou eat thereof thou shalt surely die.” Now the question presents itself, what are we to understand by the death here mentioned? Death, is of three kinds, corporeal, spiritual, and eternal, in opposition to three kinds of life respectively so called.

(.) Corporeal or animal life consists of the union of soul and body, a union by which man is fitted for discharging the functions for which he is designed in this world. In opposition to this, corporeal death denotes the cessation of these functions and the dissolution of the bodily frame, by which man is rendered unfit for any longer discharging the functions of life. In this sense the term death is used everywhere among all men and also in Scripture.

(..) Spiritual life is a power of acting (actuositas) proceeding from the fixed principle of love to God and man, from a regard to the divine glory, and in conformity to the divine law, in all truth, virtue, and godliness. In opposition to this, spiritual death denotes a continual course of sinning, a habitual violation of the law which enjoins love to God and to man–proceeding from the fixed principle of self-love and of carnal desire. The expression spiritual life in this sense often occurs in Scripture, but not so death, although such may he its meaning when man is represented as being dead in sins. In the Old Testament, however, we do not find it bearing this signification.

(∴) Eternal life is the very intimate communion which we enjoy with God–the perfection of all our faculties and parts in glory together with consummate happiness and a pure conscience. In opposition to this is eternal death, which means a state of shame and dishonor–a state in which we are disquieted by an evil conscience and are separated from God, and thus from the chief good and from all happiness, and in which moreover we are visited with every physical and moral evil. This state is called in Scripture the second death.

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