Moore:

1)

6.4.2 The Westminster Confession

Finding modified or intentionally ambiguous codification in the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) is altogether more difficult, but, just as a significant body of hypothetical universalists successfully influenced the final wording at Dordt, so too at the Westminster Assembly do we meet with a vocal minority who were able to restrain the final codification sufficiently for there to be some significant ambiguity at crucial places. This may come as a surprise to many, because it is quite clear that the Westminster Standards not only do not teach English Hypothetical Universalism or allow it to be deduced or expounded by logical deduction from various propositional statements made, but the whole exegetical approach and systematic structures of the finally codified Westminster theology are inimical to it.¹⁰³ But that should not take away from the fact that the Westminster Assembly was far from unanimous on the issue of the extent of the atonement, and the vocal and influential English Hypothetical Universalist minority pushed hard so as not to be needless ly excluded from orthodoxy at any crucial point.

And neither was the Assembly unwilling to comply. There is no evidence to suggest that the Assembly excluded views unnecessarily just because it could. Indeed, to have done so would have been strategically disastrous for this parliamentary committee, as well as against the stated will of some of its leading divines. For example, on the Fast Day of 8 October, 1645, days before the extent of the atonement was debated at the Westminster Assembly, Edward Reynolds preached a sermon to the Assembly in which he exhorted the divines to self-denial in relation to the Assembly, including in the matter of expressing their “judgments and opinions” when these threatened “to hinder the peace of the church.” Reynolds feared that a “divided ministry” would only serve as “an advantage for the common enemy.¹⁰⁴ By ‘common enemy’ Reynolds would have included Papists, Anabaptists, Arminians and the like, but not– despite his own particular redemptionist convictions–English Hypothetical Universalists. The printed edition of this sermon “Published by Authority” indicates that what Reynolds had in mind by judgments and opinions that needed to be suppressed for the sake of unity were those that were “not in themselves matters of faith and morall duty” but rather “matters meerly problematicall, and of private perswasion, wherein godly men may be differently minded, without breach of love, or hazard of salvation.”¹⁰⁵ Reynolds’ spirit here is not out of keeping with the fact that although the Westminster Confession goes way beyond Dordt’s calculated ambiguity in the direction of a much more defensive particularism, it too also falls short of explicitly proscribing English Hypothetical Universalism where, in theory, it could have done so.

An exhaustive investigation of this complicated matter is beyond the scope of this essay, but one example of this falling short would arguably be Chapter 3 of the Confession concerning “Gods eternall Decree”. This chapter was debated at length during the Assembly in the autumn of 1645, following the report of the first Committee concerning predestination on Friday, 17 October. It is significant, given his irenicism above, that Reynolds himself was in charge of this committee.¹⁰⁶ A surviving comment from Scots Commissioner George Gillespie on the opening session of the debate on the following Monday also gives an indication of the spirit in which its predestinarian statements were drawn up. Gillespie advocated studied ambiguity in the confession at this point “soe every one may injoy his owne sence.”‘¹⁰⁷ Two days later, as the debate continued, the boundaries of Gillespie’s commitment to studied ambiguity were to be put to the test as the debate moved towards the relationship between the decree of election and the redemption of Christ. Gillespie, along with Samuel Rutherford, John Lightfoot, Thomas Goodwin, Anthony Burgess and various other particular redemptionists, locked horns with the English Hypothetical Universalists Edmund Calamy, Lazarus Seaman, Stephen Marshall and Richard Vines for extensive debates on whether “Christ did intend to Redeeme the elect only.”¹⁰⁸ The extent of the atonement was debated at length for the rest of the week and rolled on into a second week of debates, with the “debate about Redemption” still appearing in the Minutes as late as 31 October. By this stage some level of agreement appears to have been reached, for discussion then proceeded to the doctrine of reprobation. But just what was this agreement, and to what extent could ‘everyone enjoy their own sense’?

WCF 3.6 reads:

Wherefore they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ, by his Spirit working in due season, arc justified , adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified and saved, but the Elect only.”¹⁰⁹

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Moore:

6.4.1 The Canons of Dordt

In the case of the Canons of Dordt, modifications deriving from a substantial minority influence are exactly what we find.⁹² It might at first be thought out of place in an essay on diversity in the British Reformed tradition to trespass into a consideration of the position on this controversy taken by the Synod of Dordt. That would doubtless have been the case had it not been for the fact that a highly significant part of this minority influence at the Synod came from the British Delegation, and the most influential among its five delegates was none other than John Davenant.⁹³ Like the Synod itself, the British Delegation was by no means unanimous on the extent of the atonement, and the influence of particular redemptionist impulses was felt, initially at least, from three delegates within the British ranks.⁹⁴ Tales of the ‘conversion’ of British delegates from particularism to hypothetical universalism under the influence of Davenant and  the other convinced hypothetical universalist delegate Samuel Ward (1572-1643) are not implausible, but hard to verify. But certainly ground was conceded to Davenant and Ward either reluctantly and for tactical reasons, or otherwise.⁹⁵ Due to the towering influence of Davenant and his close friend Ward, it was the position of English Hypothetical Universalism that was brought to bear powerfully upon the deliberations and final formulations of the Synod to the extent that the British Delegation were able to subscribe to the resulting Canons shortly before returning to England.⁹⁶

In subscribing to the Canons, the British Delegation affirmed the following in Article 2.8: “voluit Deus, ut Christus per sanguinem crucis (quo novum foedus confirmavit) ex omni populo, tribu, gente, et lingua, eos omnes et solos, qui ab aetemo ad salutem electi, et a Patre ipsi dati sunt, efficaciter redimeret.”⁹⁷ But how exactly could a theologian such as John Davenant subscribe to this? At first glance the terms efficaciter (‘effectually’ or ‘efficaciously’) and eos solos (‘those only’) appear to shut up the would-be subscriber to a particularist understanding of the death of Christ, as if Christ died to save “only” the elect. This explains why in the twentieth century this second Article of the Canons was to form the ‘L’ for ‘Limited Atonement’ in the popular ‘T.U.L.I.P.’ acronym for the so-called ‘Five Points of Calvinism’.⁹⁸ But ironically it is the inclusion of the word efficaciter that gives the hypothetical universalist room for his position. Had this word been omitted, the Canons would be teaching that Christ’s redemptive work in all respects was “only” for the elect But as it stands, what the Canons teach here is that Christ’s effectual redemptive work was “only” for the elect. This leaves a door open–even if it is only a back door–for any subscriber to hold privately to an ineffectual redemptive work for the nonelect, or, to put it differently, Christ dying for the non-elect sufficiently but not efficiently–precisely what a hypothetical universalist usage of the Lombardian formula entailed.

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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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Chambers:

CHAPTER 6

THE COVENANT OF REDEMPTION

Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.¹

The role of the covenant of redemption² has already been referred to both in relation to the purchase of faith and Owen’s understanding of redemption and satisfaction, and was highlighted in the outline of Owen’s argument as being central to the development of a structure that would allow Owen to convincingly demonstrate that Christ only intended to benefit the elect by his death, that it was only “for” the elect. What is the covenant of redemption as Owen understands it? Considered now in itself what contribution does it make to “The Death of Death” and the position Owen is arguing for? Is it a convincing structure which one should or must adopt in seeking to understand Christ’s work? In attempting to answer these questions we will first look at Owen’s exposition of this covenant in The Death of Death, supplementing that with his treatment of this covenant elsewhere, principally in Exercitation XXVIII of his commentary on Hebrews. We will then consider the role this covenant plays by relating it both to Owen’s central thesis and the other arguments he advances to support that thesis. Following that examination of the covenant in The Death of Death we will consider the origin of this covenant, its modern exponents and critics, and make an assessment of the place of such a covenant today. In the light of that assessment we will then reconsider Owen’s reliance on that covenant in relation to his thesis.

The covenant of redemption in the Death of Death.

The “covenant or compact” made in eternity between the Father and the Son is introduced by Owen in Book 1:III as the third aspect of the first of the Father’s “two peculiar acts… in this work of our redemption by the blood of Jesus,” his “sending of his Son into the world for this employment.”³ It is thus an element of Owen’s grounding the work of the atonement in the Trinitarian life of God who is the agent of this work of redemption.⁴

While elsewhere Owen goes to some length to both justify and fully explicate this application of covenant language to the relations between the Father and the Son,⁵ Owen is content to here assume the validity of this structure and focus on two aspects of this covenant that have particular relevance to his argument. These two elements are firstly the Father’s promise,

to protect and assist him in the accomplishment and perfect fulfilling of the whole business and dispensation about which he was employed, or which he was to undertake.⁶

It is on the basis of these promises that the Son undertakes “this heavy burden” of being a Savior for his people, and these promises are the foundation of the Savior’s confidence,

so that the ground of our Savior’s confidence and assurance in this great undertaking, and a strong motive to exercise his graces received in the utmost endurings, was this engagement of his Father upon this compact of assistance and protection.⁷

The second element is the Father’s promise of success, or a good issue out of all his sufferings, and a happy accomplishment and attainment of the end of his great undertaking.

This is that aspect of the covenant that is most directly relevant to the dispute about the intention of God in the atonement, for it directly introduces the notion of ‘end’ or purpose in relation to the Son’s work, his ‘great undertaking’ and assures it of success. That ‘end’ is what is promised the Son and it is that alone which the Son intended to achieve.⁸ For the content of the promise we are directed to Isaiah 49, and Owen makes it clear that what is promised is the salvation of his people, “his seed by covenant,” and it is only this the Son intends in the work. This sole determination to attain the promise is apparent in Christ’s intercession in John 17,

the request that our Savior makes upon the accomplishment of the work about which he was sent; which certainly was neither for more nor less than God had engaged himself to him for.

That intercession, which is

no doubt grounded upon the fore-cited promises, which by his Father were made unto him,⁹

is for a full confluence of the love of God and fruits of that love upon all his elect, in faith, sanctification, and glory.¹⁰

That is , what is promised Christ is the actual salvation of the elect, and this is the ‘end’ he seeks to achieve. The Son’s role is his agreement to undertake the work under the terms and conditions proposed, the principle being that he should make his life a ransom price for sinners.¹¹

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