Hey Kevin,

To be up front, I am not an advocate of the formal covenant of works as set up by 17thC federalism. I think its a construct thats got a few problems. I dont believe in the idea of contract, where Adam had to merit life (either by congruent, condign or so called pactum-merit). I think he had life. I prefer the more classic Augustinian idea of filial relationship or “covenant” (small c). I posted the comment from AA Hodge because there is a growing trend today, in its over-reaction to “federal vision” theologies, which claims there was no grace at all in the pre-fall Adam-God relationship, or something like that. The argument I hear all the time is that if there was grace pre-fall, then grace post-fall is devalued or destroyed. I think thats a pretty shallow line to take. Nor do I think that the federalist “contract” model is necessary to ground Adamic imputation of sin. Federal imputation based on… federal realism?… was not known by the church for about 17 hundred years, during which the Augustinians had no trouble in grounding original. I hope thats not a case of too much information. :-)

Kevin says: That’s a great find! The law, after all, was/is intended to give us life in its fullest and most free, secure in God’s care and protection. The Cross ultimately is about getting us (as a fallen human race) back to that point of perfect, lawful communion between God and man. Thus, law and grace are, for the most part, interchangeable ways of expressing God’s intentions toward mankind.

David: I am not sure the Law was intended to give us life? What does that mean exactly? Adam was created with life and in life. The single command, prohibitive in nature, was to protect the life he had. I think I would head in that direction.

Kevin: Though, “for the most part” is a decisive qualification, since “grace” is what expresses the mercy and forgiveness that “law,” by itself, does not express. I think this is why the older Reformed made the distinction between a covenant of works and what came after: the covenant of grace first revealed in the protoevangelium. The covenant prior to the fall (the covenant of works) had not revealed God’s forgiveness.

David: Re: federalism… sure, thats Federalism. However, Paul constructs things a little differently. Law (as covenant and administration and as discipline) comes as a response to sin. So again, for me, family comes before law, as basis for relationship. I think family comes before contracted relationships.

Kevin: It’s a good distinction that the “covenant of works” doctrine is trying to secure, and Hodge’s clarification goes some ways toward obviating Barth’s concerns — though Barth is not happy with anything less than a covenant rooted in his supralapsarian Christology.

David: Sure, I think there were two main pitfalls that came out of 17thC Reformed scholasticism, one was the tri-partite federal schema, and the other was the lapsarian project. I think both went beyond Scripture (even good and necessary consequence). The idea of grounding God’s intra-trinitarian artchtypical relationship into a contractual-federal schema is bad news, and then to ground the divine-human basis of relationship (pre-fall) is another bad idea. It skews redemptive history and mucks up the law-grace hermeneutic. It created a lot of maddening questions, problems and disjunctions, which were unnecessary. Barth’s own lapsarian schema was just as trapped as any other lasparian formulation.

I am working on posting Venema on the Covenant of Works asap. I think he nails a lot of it.

Sorry to be a naysayer,
David

Hey Kevin,

Ah so you are at Charlotte. Small world. You know where I work dont you?

I posted the Venema piece Ive been sitting on for a years now. I think its quite good. The CoW is an inference based on some skimpy inductions. The argument for it has three lines of thought. The first one is the reference to the Hosea 6:7 verse. That has its own complications, like 1) whether Adam means the person Adam or mankind. 2) Even if it refers to Adam, does it support a federal compact? The other line of thought is tricky. Certain elements involved in Biblical compacting are identified as (allegedly) being present in the Adam-Creator relationship. This presence allegedly establishes proof of a federal compact. Venema rightly points out that these elements are not present formally. I would add the claim that the works-compact is in the eye of the beholder alone. One sees these original federal “elements” present, because one wants to see them present. The problem is, these markers, “parties,” “threat”, “promise (implicit or implied)” are present in other contexts where persons function as a unit or in agreement and not only by way of federal compact, eg: a family. A family unit has headship, promises of blessings, threats of punishment, law, grace, rewards, and so on. You have to want to see it the original Adam-Creator relationship as a federal compact before it arises out of the text naturally. The third line of thought is tricky too: it is that certain corollary doctrines flounder if there is no CoW, such as imputation of original sin, and of Christ’s righteousness, etc. These doctrines were easily sustained by the church for 1500 years without needing a CoW to make them explicable, and so they will still be explicable without a CoW today. :-)

Arguments against it are powerful, for example, its complete conceptual absence in Redemptive history is telling. Christ is never identified as submitting to it, coming under it, fulfilling it, etc. There is no reference to a properly “works” covenant in Pauline contra-legalism literature. The NT juxtaposes the NC over and against the MC covenant, without a hint of an Adamic CoWs. Its just not a construct that can be positively identified (even by good and necessary consequence) from the biblical data.

I think the dogmatic certainty attached to it is primarily derived from the confessional weight and the perception of mid- to later 17thC Protestant Scholastic theological consensus. Add to this a tacit peer pressure that insists that adherence to a CoW is a litmus test for orthodoxy.

Thanks for commenting and reading.
David

Yeah thats where I am.

Have fun with Greek. I strongly suggest you do Hebrew and Greek together. ;-) <--Joke. Say hello to James Anderson for me if you see him. David