Covenant Works: The Biblical Way

COVENANT WORKS

THE BIBLICAL WAY

T. Hoogsteen

COVENANT WORKS

THE BIBLICAL WAY

Copyright © 2015 Ted Hoogsteen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copy right © 1946, 1952, and 1971 by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Introduction

First Formation Contents

First Formation

Second Formation Contents

Second Formation

Third Formation Contents

Third Formation

Fourth Formation Contents

Fourth Formation

Fifth Formation Contents

Fifth Formation

Sixth Formation Contents

Sixth Formation

Seventh Formation Contents

Seventh Formation

Covenant Vision

Bibliography

To Jayne:

for connubialling

Preface

The development of the covenant structures and unifies the Scriptures, Genesis-Revelation. Yahweh throughout the Old Testament millennia from Adam over Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David first formed, then reformed the promises and the obligations. In the New Testament dispensation, upon the Incarnation, Yahweh, now the Son of God, Jesus, the Christ, revealed the seventh formation of the covenant. This working of the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son calls forth great magnification and strong gratitude from all called to the Faith.

Each reformation of the promises and the obligations from generation to generation the Lord created solely by grace; always he who revealed himself the LORD God throughout the Old Testament dispensation and Jesus in the New summons his own into covenant community, together out of gratitude worked by the Holy Spirit to believe the promises and live the obligations, thus establishing the Kingdom and therein the Church.

Salvation—believing the promises and living the obligations—the LORD God first formulated as Gen 3:14–19 and evolved throughout the Old Testament documents, until its final glory recorded in the New Testament.

————

I thank my wife for uplifting assistance in critical reading and for staunch support.

Introduction

From Genesis to and including Revelation,¹ Christ Jesus in the name of the Father and through the Holy Spirit revealed the covenant as the structuring and unifying force of the Scriptures. Moreover, in righteousness and holiness, he shaped the promises and the obligations for the Bible’s interpretive criterion, the standard by which to read the Word. Jesus Christ, glorious, established covenant revelation for the historical framework of his majestic lordship.

Interpretive Barriers

Many thinkers struggling to understand the covenant actually erected barriers against knowing two constants, the promises and the obligations.

I

i) Johannes Coccejus (1603–1669), Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), and Hermanus Witsius (1636–1708)² entrenched a blocking vocabulary. By the misshaping logic of Neo-Scholasticism³ those scholars advocated distinctives, such as a prehistorical covenant of redemption, a historical covenant of works, and a historical covenant of grace. Such abortive categories, in later centuries thoughtlessly repeated as conventional wisdom with traditionalist appeal, by and large halted progress in covenant studies. To approach the Scriptures from out of predestination⁴ proved impossible.

In what became known as Federal Theology, or Federalism, seventeenth century movers and shakers began with predestination based on a nonexistent covenant of redemption rather than the actual promises and obligations foundational for biblical reflection. Their respective Neo-Scholastic versions—Coccejus with dogmatic, Voetius with biblical-theological, Witsius with mediating strengths—locked the covenant out of the mainstream of scriptural believing, thinking, and living. This biblical engagement impeded later studies, since concentration on sorting out the dynamics of predestination, election or reprobation, consumed attention—on the whole.

ii) The main problem with Federalism’s hindering approach to covenant studies? Caught up by the then modern Neo-Scholastic spirits of the times, the covenant remained unintegrated in the whole of biblical interpretation; those soon outdated studies with limited contact to the promises and the obligations failed as the Bible’s interpretive criterion. Hence, Neo-Scholastic methods restrained and discouraged in-depth covenant studies beyond Genesis.⁵ Despite powerful insights and great wisdom won in the past with respect to the covenant, since the seventeenth century Federal Theology brought little further substantial work to light. Men as R.L. Dabney⁶ and L. Berkhof⁷ summed up and advocated much of the conventional covenant thinking current since Coccejus, Voetius, and Witsius. Summary interpretation assumed closure to further inquiry into this biblical basic.

II

i) Throughout the late nineteenth century swollen spirits of evolutionism assaulted and possessed Old Testament studies. Purportedly the Bible’s historical movement functioned evolutionistically—from lower to higher religion, from lower to higher morality.⁸ Wellhausen’s⁹ Critical Theology, or Documentary Hypothesis, or Source Criticism, or Higher Criticism, with steamroller persistence presumed to control the Old Testament; in fact, this theory presupposed a wide range of diversity in oral traditions, which only with murky gradations and over long centuries jelled into more unified and written patterns.

Allegedly, this process from oral memory to written status emerged from very primitive stages of society. Hence, in his theorizing, Wellhausen (1844–1918) expected and then found monotheism replacing polytheism. Critical Theology thereupon depreciated and denied the historical actuality of early biblical documents, particularly Genesis-Deuteronomy.¹⁰

Critical Theology quickly gained a veneer of academic respectability. Convinced that prophets during and after eighth century BC occupied the high ground of monotheism and morality, Wellhausianism concluded that the Old Testament had been written to provide a history for the Israel of the prophets, thus to legitimate their work. By this heterodox interpretation, personages as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob turned into names for cities, countries, eras, institutions, tribes, or mythical characters. In effect, those men owned no real existence, and Genesis little historical worth.¹¹

By import from surrounding nations and by adaptation, Moses worked the Hittite form of covenant into Israel’s theological structure to consolidate the Twelve Tribes. Actual interest in the covenant, as a result, for the prophets began at the earliest with Moses. Even then, Wellhausen found in the Exodus only limited interest related to covenant studies. The covenant, as he perceived it, consisted of a projection backward from the prophetic era. Nor did theocracy exist from the time of Moses in the form of the covenant, though that was afterwards a favourite mode of regarding it. The relation of Jehovah to Israel was in its nature and origin a natural one; there was no interval between Him and His people to call for thought or question. Only when the existence of Israel had come to be threatened by the Syrians and Assyrians, did such prophets as Elijah and Amos raise the Deity high above the people, sever the natural bond between them, and put in its place a relation depending on conditions, conditions of a moral character.¹² For such Source Criticism, then, even covenant interest was scarce. During Wellhausen’s height of influence, before archaeological research refocused interest on and in the Genesis-Exodus history, Old Testament scholarship hobbled along on crippling evolutionistic thought processes.

ii) Throughout early twentieth century decades, Form Criticism/Form History/Redaction Criticism/Type Criticism gained prominence, notably through Rudolph Karl Bultmann (1884–1976). He concentrated on the Gospels, while others before him worked this theory out for Old Testament consequences. This approach sought to understand the books of the Bible by a critical analysis of their composition, authorship, provenience, purpose, and source.¹³ In Old Testament investigations of this kind, students worked on the background of individual accounts, documentary sources, to discover any historical significance.

On account of archaeological finds during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century decades, form-critical theorizing softened the harsh lines of evolutionistic inventions with respect to the Old Testament. For archaeologists found historical records of the actual places and peoples, quite contrary to Wellhausen’s speculations.

In rock-strewn fields of Critical Theology, then, Form Criticism attended to lines of energy provided by oral tradition. With a measure of hesitation. Although it was conceded that the traditions might contain historical reminiscences, no one could say with assurance just what these were; one hesitated to lay weight on the traditions in reconstructing the story of Israel’s origins.¹⁴ Yet glacially moving changes occurred, purportedly also according to form-critical standards—always within Wellhausianism. The documentary hypothesis still commands general acceptance, and must be the starting point of any discussion. Though the evolutionary approach to Israel’s history associated with the name of Wellhausen would find few defenders today, and though the documents themselves have come to be regarded by most in an entirely new light, the documentary hypothesis itself has not been generally abandoned.¹⁵ Because of Wellhausen’s hold on Old Testament studies, any approach associated with it also failed to come to grips with the covenant.

Through Form Criticism the Old Testament became, in effect, an editorial creation, the work of many editors compiling oral traditions into written forms, then over centuries modifying the written texts. Any actual knowledge of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets became restricted to the little discovered within the individual accounts retained from the original oral tradition as determined by J, E, D, and P classifications. Editors and a final, post-exilic, redactor (re)arranged numerous extracts from the oral past into the present Old Testament form after BC 721,¹⁶ certainly before BC 500–444.¹⁷ To provide for suffering Israel a meaningful and hope-imbued history, . . . the principle point is that we can see in the manner in which the legends are brought together in these books the evidence that we are dealing with collections which cannot have been completed at one given time, but developed in the course of history.¹⁸ That is, through collaborations of many editors, each with a varying agenda, the Old Testament became a literary collection of diverse bits and pieces from the past, making a very complex picture.¹⁹ In fact, a puzzle with many missing pieces.

iii) From the start, form-critical manipulations troubled these arrangements of alleged legends, myths, anecdotes, brief histories, epic tales, legal materials, and liturgical forms; for each editor and redactor rang in his own alterations and therewith purposes. In the process of discovering individual units, form-critical students lost the actual structure of the Bible and therewith missed the covenantal architectonics. Form Critics tended to answer the following questions:

1.

Were the numerous extracts collected from each era originals, or did generations of editors change these from earlier and later existing traditions to make always different (theological) points?

2.

How were the redactions up to the final transmission altered, abridged, expanded, or contracted in order to achieve a historical purpose?

Redactional Criticism’s answers started from the presupposition that oral traditions and literary narrations followed fixed patterns, or forms; each legend, myth, folk tale, psalm, prayer, oracle, threat/rebuke came with a definite style. Hence, from stylistic considerations and also laws of transmission, each literary fragment and/or edition/redaction may be dated—given the nineteenth-twentieth centuries evolutionistic perspective popularized by Wellhausianism. "The task of the literary historian is first of all to isolate the individual literary unit by determining its beginning and ending; he must then seek to identify its type or genre (Gattung) by observing its formal characteristics, style, mode of composition, terminology, and rhetorical features. Once the literary genre has been recognized and described, then its origin must be traced back to its provenience in the preliterary stage of formulation."²⁰ Historical studies in such evolutionistic light enabled detection and determination of the original form of each individual piece, allegedly also editorial and redactional alterations in different historical situations and for distinctive requirements.

With identification of literary types, transmission patterns, and stylistic laws, form-critical historians attempted to locate the original oral tradition and there find its first meaning. The study then of laws governing literary transmission, elaborations of original pieces, abridgments of oral histories, etc., established the framework, the form, of at one time oral utterances. To gain a historical core and meaning, the form first required isolation, then identification.

At issue in Form Criticism/Formgeschichte: to divide Scriptures into component units under J, E. P and D analyses, thus to date the individual pieces and bits as historical, legendary, mythical, etc. Can oral traditions be isolated from before crystallization into its various Bible books, then study of sources commenced. In this manner, Redaction Criticism may be looked at as a research process, its success measured by finding the first biblical origins, plus discovering the inner reasons and workings of redactional modifications. This hypothesis, quite understandably, led critics to view the early traditions of Israel with a skeptical eye. Since none of them was held to be even remotely contemporaneous with the events described, and since presuppositions forbade appeal to a doctrine of Scripture as a guarantee of factual accuracy, an extremely negative evaluation resulted.²¹ Hence: units of tradition, if isolated, produced assumed histories behind or underneath the biblically given history.²²

Even with the slowing of evolutionistic biases and growing awareness of archaeological relevance for scriptural history, form-critical students evaluated each account, or segment, or paragraph, or phrase for a time slot, early or late. In all this, the covenant remained more an idea than a structural foundation. Critical students failed at presenting the promises and the obligations significant for each formation.

1.

By a cut and paste approach to Scriptures, thus breaking the whole into disconnected and incoherent extracts, the foundation for the covenant and its reformations passed from view.

2.

By forcing the covenant as a late import into Israel’s history, thinkers in Source and Form Criticisms missed its actual formation and reformations, plus its New Testament chronicling.

According to the main types of Higher Criticism, Source and Form, the covenant appeared allegedly late in Israel’s history, without functioning as the fundamental for the Scriptures; references to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were inserted, at best, only to ground a prehistory for the later Israel of the prophets. Specifically, then, Source and Form Criticisms served as formidable barriers to covenant studies. Hence, the entire critical apparatus stayed as an interpretive barrier to the covenant. And to the Scriptures.

III

Dispensationalists, traditionally,²³ partitioned the Scriptures into disparate epochs, therewith disrupting, if not snubbing, covenant revelation; in each of these walled-off periods of time God allegedly imposed a different method for the people involved to achieve salvation.²⁴

Normally, by harnessing a Darbyist philosophy of history to Scriptures, dispensationalists separated the Bible in seven unseemly ways—of innocence, of conscience, of government, of grace, of law, of the Church, and of the Kingdom, . . . an understanding of the Bible that divides the relationship of God to humanity into sharply separated epochs.²⁵ In each, the Lord called for a cumbersome, antinomian sort of stewardship to be accomplished. However, sinning terminated each clearly demarcated dispensation, permitting limited,²⁶ if any, continuance between the eras.

In time of the fifth era, Israel supposedly rushed into an illusory legalism. The law, we are told in the Scofield Reference Bible, was first proposed to the nation by God, then it was rashly accepted, and that rash voluntary acceptance was imposed by God upon the nation.²⁷ With the rise of Israel, the Lord God developed parallel-but-separate roles and destinies²⁸ for this people and the Church, a determinative feature of Dispensationalism.

By adding a Palestinian covenant, dispensationalists attempted to account for the space promise in an unbiblical manner, confusing the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh covenant formations; for, Darbyites insisted, the land grant to Abraham remains unsatisfied. If the land promises were based solely on the promises of God in Deuteronomy, these might seem conditional because of the conditional nature of the blessings and cursings section (Deut 27-30) in which the land promise is found. Therefore it may be better to use the unconditional, unilateral covenant God made with Abram (Gen. 15) as the basis for Israel’s right to the land blessings.²⁹ This contestable measure put additional words in the mouth of the LORD God, the omnipotent I AM WHO I AM.

With respect to the sixth, the age of the Church became an interim arrangement. [This] intervening ‘age of the church’ is sometimes treated as a parenthesis, where the ebb and flow of events serve primarily to prepare believers for God’s final in-breaking upon human history.³⁰ At the conclusion to this dispensation, the Lord Jesus will, allegedly, either in a pre-, or mid-, or post-tribulation rapture, abruptly remove dispensationalists from the earth. Throughout this time frame of the Church, all who have lived in a manner that is consistent with the character of God, that is, in a most Arminian and antinomian fashion, ascend into heaven, regardless of the frantic consequences this leaves upon the earth. In the dispensational mind, however, the church-as-parenthesis broke the history of Israel, in a sense, pushed interest in the history of Israel aside, even underground. Traditional Dispensationalism lacked every awareness of the Israel-Church-New Israel transition, the people whom the Lord Jesus added successively to one another as his covenant own. Only progressive Dispensationalism, post-World War II, somewhat modified the hard break between Israel and Church, without, however, bringing the two scripturally into the one people of the Lord.³¹

In the post-rapture period, the age of the Kingdom,³² for Jesus Christ’s supposed thousand year reign, the Lord confronts Israel finally with the Old Testament Law; for salvation or damnation, these people then obey or disobey.

These seven dispensations, distinct and separate with respect to method for salvation or damnation, dominated as the traditional 1909 and revised 1967 Scofield standards. "In a classic statement from 1965, Charles Ryrie tried to isolate three beliefs as ‘the sine qua non of Dispensationalism’: (1) a strict distinction between Israel and the church (from which flows the concern for the various divine dispensations in history), (2) ‘a system of hermeneutics which is usually called literal interpretation’ but that Ryrie thought could be better denominated ‘normal or plain’; and (3) a concern for the glory of God rather than simply the outworking of salvation as the ‘underlying purpose of God in the world.’"³³ Thus, Ryrie, a determining dispensational figure, also struggled with this footloose interpretation of the times.

For this categorizing of the ages, dispensationalists invented and stuck to a rigorous pattern of thinking.³⁴ Ryrie also showed how Dispensationalism offers a more adequate philosophy of history than other competing hermeneutical schemes by providing ‘(1) the recognition of historical events and successions, or a proper concept of the progress of revelation; (2) the unifying principle; and (3) the ultimate goal of history.’³⁵ In its fragmented manner Dispensationalism suppressed covenant revelation in favor of the overrated power of rightly handling the Word, a favorite Scofield phraseology.

Progressive Dispensationalism cordoned off somewhat the widening power of this school of thought, allowing that Christ, already inaugurated as the Davidic king at his ascension, is now reigning in heaven on the throne of David.³⁶ This breached the original divisioning between the fifth, sixth, and seventh dispensations belatedly to conform in some manner to the realities of the Scriptures. The present age is not a historical parenthesis unrelated to the history that precedes and follows it; rather, it is an integrated phase in the development of the mediatorial kingdom. It is the beginning of the fulfillment of the eschatological promises.³⁷ This grudging nod to the common reasoning of the covenant permitted some undeniable unfolding of the Davidic covenant in the ministry of Jesus Christ throughout the history of the Church; this minimal endorsement of covenant continuity may have broken through as a major concession in order to acknowledge the always predominating covenant revelation.

By compelling Scriptures into a dispensationalist straitjacket, these eisegetes insisted upon dual tracks for salvation, one for Israel as nation, by law, one for the Church, by grace. This manipulation of and propaganda for an ideology, contrary to the Bible’s historical structure, continually stumbled off the way. Insufficiently aware of the promises and the obligations, nor with an eye for the eternity of both since creation, dispensationalists recognized the following— the edenic covenant, the Adamic covenant, the Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Palestinian covenant,³⁸ the Davidic covenant, and the New covenant,³⁹ more in number than actually revealed.

The point throughout: Dispensationalism even with its progressive wing subverted Scripture reading to impose upon the Church a foreign-to-the-Word philosophy of history. By subordinating the covenant to Darbyism, this tendentious movement suppressed study and knowledge of the promises and the obligations.

Along with the Federal and Critical Theologies, Dispensationalism too developed an impressive and insulating barrier to the comprehensive reality of the covenant.

IV

Some biblical students (Federal and Critical) began covenant studies with Noah,⁴⁰ or Abraham,⁴¹ or concentrated more on Moses,⁴² as if the covenant comprised less than the spinal structure and architectonic impetus of all Scriptures. Also, except for unavoidable references to Jer 31:31–34/Heb 8:8–13, studies mostly ended at the conclusion to the Old Testament; thus they imposed impressions upon the Church that the New Testament stood outside this fundamental Bible construction, choking back further covenantal interest in all Scriptures.

V

Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Meredith G. Kline (1922–2007) tried innovation to move covenant thinking off Federal Theology’s dead center and out of Critical Theology’s free fall. Barth on the basis of speculation—creation as the external presupposition of the covenant (Gen. 1), the covenant as the internal presupposition of creation (Gen 2)—sought to illuminate Scriptures. Kline by way of eisegesis interpreted Exodus-Deuteronomy in the light of early second millennium BC Hittite political treaties. Hereby both laid out disappointing pathways, cutting off insight into the historical promise and obligation development.

VI

Due to faulty works on the covenant, interpretive barriers, recognition of the promises and the obligations failed. Such dearth of serious covenant engagement tainted and quashed clear direction in Bible reading, indeed, impeded study of the Word with fatal instability, never imparting evidence of the wisdom of maturing.

For measuring covenant interaction, two threshold questions:

1.

Who can point out the promises?

2.

Who can identify the obligations?

Ignorance at this juncture standardized the worst deterrent with respect to knowing the Scriptures structurally.

Given old-schools’ interpretive barriers—Federal, Critical, and Dispensational—therefore the subtitling, The Biblical Way, to reopen the worthy-of-pursuit coherence of the Bible. Renewed priming of covenant studies refuels the ground search for Scriptures’ moving infrastructure from Genesis to and including the Apocalypse.

Interpretive Openness

More now to the covenantal opening of all Scriptures.

I

Throughout this inquiry the covenant moves as the central interpretive criterion of the Scriptures,⁴³ magnifying foremost the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Lord Jesus created the formative covenant and worked out every reformation since. He also accomplished the main transition of the covenant, from the Old Testament to the New. Heb 8:6, . . . as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry which is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. His intense participation in the historical development of the promises and the obligations—righteous and holy—grounded the biblical infrastructure on the one firm foundation. Additional to the great covenant revelation, the Author included lesser bonds—Abraham and Abimelech’s, Gen 21:25–34; David and Jonathan’s, 1 Sam 18:1–5; etc. These other covenants solidified relationships different from the main one.

II

In Covenant Works, the Contents separate and distinguish as well as immediately define the eminent era of each promise and obligation structuring:

First Formation

Second Formation

Third Formation

Fourth Formation

Fifth Formation

Sixth Formation

Seventh Formation.

This way of chaptering lays out succinctly the Word’s historical growth, from the Old Testament of the fullness of the New. In fact, then, the structuring of Covenant Works fleshes out the historical periods in which the LORD God carried all promise-and-obligation progress further.

III

Outlining Covenant Works, each chapter holds a dual set up. First, COVENANT BASICS structures the fundamentals, the promises and the obligations. Second, COVENANT MATTERS provides reflections on necessary exegetical patterns and explanations of recurrent questioning concerning freedom, membership/predestination, the future, etc. Reflections in Covenant Matters take on and approach the form of little essays comfortable only within the Covenant Works framing.

Respective subsections within Covenant Matters on membership include the biblical way on election as well as reprobation. Covenant and predestination belong together, intimately and forever. However, covenant knowledge precedes coming to grips with predestinarian interactions.

For more detailed content references, each chapter ushers in its own Contents, pertinent subject matter.

Also, throughout Covenant Works appear quiet conversations with representatives, among others, of Federal, Critical, Dispensational Theologies.

IV

Since the covenant structures Scriptures from beginning to end, the promises and the obligations magnify the Christ in his church building and kingdom expansion. Knowing covenant revelation brings fullness to the proclamation of the Word and knowing the Word clarifies the covenant. With this knowledge all of the Church may judge the biblicality of preaching, since ministers primed with the fundamental structure as well as the eschatological movement of Scriptures actually speak in the name of Christ Jesus, Head of the Church.

Through this immersion in the Word,⁴⁴ new generations of the Church may believe, know, and consciously live the promises and the obligations. For that full-hearted hope, a conclusion within the Letter to the Ephesians, 4:15–16, well identified the narrow road to covenant maturity.

. . . speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.

How else than through knowing the covenantal substance of the Scriptures shall we in the Spirit daily work away at and achieve first on earth life’s purpose?

V

By the Holy Spirit’s covenant opening of the Bible, missionary works gain leading-edge insight and honor against passing strange ways of Salvationists, Moralists, Exemplarists, Allegorists, etc. As ministers of the Word bring to bear in Sunday preaching differences between covenant keepers and covenant breakers, Christ’s missionary mandate runs into the foreground.

VI

Throughout open-ended Covenant Works, chronic tensions and inaccuracies of antiquated studies fall away, dead issues.

For all moved by the Spirit to believe the promises and do the obligations in life’s every part, a call to all sensible men and women of the Church, a paraphrase of 1 Cor 10:15, please, weigh Covenant Works in the scales of the Word.

Anticipating heightened interest in and awareness of the promises and the obligations, one incontrovertible fact governed the Bible from the beginning: the Author constructed the Scriptures the Book of the Covenant.

1. The Scriptures minus the Apocrypha, which treated covenants only as common legal agreements.

2. Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man,

1677

/

1990

.

3. Neo-Scholasticism, or Protestant Scholasticism:

1

) a rationalistic philosophy popular among Protestant academics already in the late sixteenth century with which to engage each other as well as Roman Catholic scholastics;

2

) a rationalism from which, out of predestinationism, to think through and organize the great teachings of Scriptures.

4. Strauss, Schilder on the Covenant,

21

, The popular view of Reformed dogmaticians was that one’s point of departure should be the eternal decrees of God.

5. Federal theology concentrated on one end of the Old Testament, Critical Theology on the other.

6. Dabney, Systematic Theology,

1871

/

1985

.

7. Berkhof, Systematic Theology,

1939

/

1968

.

8. Hillers, Covenant,

140

, Critical orthodoxy saw in the prophets the great creative figures in Israelite religion, the ones who made of a simple, natural faith a genuine monotheism vitally concerned with righteous living.

9. Wellhausen, Prolegomena,

1878

/

1961

.

10. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity,

258

, In the course of time a great many laws and practices which can hardly have been Mosaic were introduced into Israel; their lateness is often established by comparison of the forms which they assume in JE, D, and P, which show a progressive development first adequately emphasized by Wellhausen.

11. An extreme voice: Brueggemann, Cadences of Home,

12

, . . . narrative renderings of reality in the Bible (as elsewhere) are not factual reportage, but are inevitably artistic constructs that stand at a distance from any ‘fact’ and are filtered through interest of a political kind.

12. Wellhausen, Prolegomena,

417

.

13. Gunkel, The Psalms, iv.

14. Bright, A History of Israel,

61

.

15. Ibid.,

62

.

16. Ibid.,

65

.

17. Gunkel, The Legends of Genesis,

157

.

18. Ibid.,

127

.

19. Ibid.,

129

.

20. Gunkel, The Psalms, v.

21. Bright, A History of Israel,

61

.

22. Jocz, The Covenant,

19

–

20

, There was a time when the Bible was treated as a monolithic structure. With the advance of biblical criticism the idea of unity in which every part of the Bible fitted and supplemented every other part, fell into disrepute. Scholars went out of their way to prove how ill assorted was the material, especially of the Old Testament. In the end it became impossible even to contemplate a coherent Old Testament theology, unless a scholar was prepared to jeopardize his reputation. At best he could confine himself to the exegesis of a single document always bearing in mind its isolated position.

23. Traditional Dispensationalism began with John Nelson Darby (

1800

–

1882

), its method popularized by C.I. Scofield (

1843

–

1921

).

Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,

117

, "With the publication of C.I. Scofield’s annotated edition of the King James Version in

1909

(a second edition followed shortly thereafter in

1917

), premillennial dispensationalism came to dominate those northern evangelicals who had left the mainline denominations and to exert a growing influence among evangelicals North and South who remained in the historic denominations."

24 Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People,

810

, At the heart of the matter . . . were two major themes: a ‘pattern for the ages’ consisting of successive dispensations (usually seven in number, with the Millennium being the ‘Great Sabbath’) and a radical distinction between Jews and Christians.

25. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,

119

.

26. The grace of the Abrahamic era also overtook the sixth, the Mosaic law the Lord reserved as well for the seventh, far in the future.

27. Young, "Confession and Covenant,

61

.

The Schofield Reference Bible,

20

.

28. Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists,

11

.

29. Master, The New Covenant,

95

.

30. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,

119

.

31. Holwerda, Jesus & Israel,

57

, If the church is Israel, then the church is not just an interim arrangement but a people standing in continuity with Old Testament Israel and carrying out Israel’s mission in the world.

Fruchtenbaum, Israel and the Church,

116

, Dispensationalists have correctly seen the consistent distinction the Bible makes between Israel and the church, but have not always used the best terminology in trying to show the nature of this distinction. A common distinction some dispensationalists make is to describe Israel as an ‘earthly people’ with ‘earthly promises,’ with the church as a ‘heavenly people’ with ‘heavenly promises.’ However, such a distinction is not correct, nor is it necessary to dispensationalism. Each entity has both an earthly future with earthly promises and a heavenly future with heavenly promises.

32. Quebedeaux, The Worldly Evangelicals,

32

, This school of theology divides history into several (often seven) ‘dispensations’ of time, each of which signifies a different way in which God relates to humanity, and in which humanity utterly fails to please God. In dispensationalism a literal thousand-year millennial reign of Christ on earth is preceded by a seven-year tribulation, or time of woes, in which the Antichrist is revealed, and before which the church (all born-again Christians) is ‘raptured,’ taken directly into the presence of God, until the beginning of the millennium.

33. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,

118

.

Ryrie, Dispensationalism,

45

-

48

.

34. Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists,

52

–

70

, tracked down this system in terms of theology, exegesis, hermeneutics, psychology, etc., explaining also why Darbyists step out of this philosophical ideology only with difficulty.

35. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,

136

.

Ryrie, Dispensationalism,

20

-

24

.

36. Saucy, The Kingdom of God In The Teaching Of Jesus,

344

, #

103

p.

Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today, 167

.

Ryrie, Update on Dispensationalism,

21

.

37. Saucy, The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism,

28

. Ibid.,

80

, While it remains for us to consider the New Testament teaching on the messianic kingdom itself, the evidence dealing with the restoration of the Davidic kingship reveals only an initial fulfillment of the covenant promises during the present age.

38. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants,

217

–

8

, "A basic misreading of the text of Scripture apparently has led to the introduction of this additional covenant in contradistinction from the Mosaic covenant established at Sinai. The Scofield Bible uses Deuteronomy

30

:

3

as the passage of Scripture for introducing this particular covenant."

39. The New Open Bible Study Edition,

6

,

9

,

14

,

18

–

19

,

91

,

245

,

370

–

1

,

837

–

8

.

40. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross,

71

.

van der Waal, The Covenantal Gospel,

25

.

41. McCoy & Baker, Fountainhead of Federalism,

104

.

Shepherd, The Call of Grace,

11

.

42. Wellhausen, Prolegomena, vii.

Bright, A History of Israel,

9

.

Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, Vol. I.

43. Jocz, The Covenant,

31

, Much if not all biblical theology is grounded upon the covenantal relationship between God and His people. In fact, the Bible is best viewed as the history of the covenant, or covenants.

44. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants,

8

, The basic terminology describing the inauguration of a covenantal relationship vivifies the life-and-death intensity of the divine covenants.

1

THE OLD TESTAMENT FORMATION

First Formation

COVENANT BASICS | 5

COVENANT PROMISES |

5

First Promise

Second Promise

Third Promise

COVENANT OBLIGATIONS |

7

First Obligation

Second Obligation

Third Obligation

COVENANT MATTERS | 10

EXEGETICAL PATTERNS |

11

Cultural Mandate

Covenant of Redemption

Covenant of Works

Covenant of Grace

Headship

Condescension

A Singular Tree

The Speaking Serpent

Eve’s Creation

COVENANT GLOBALITY |

25

COVENANT FREEDOM |

26

Image Bearing

Headship

Office Bearing

COVENANT MEMBERSHIP |

28

COVENANT CULTURE |

30

COVENANT VISION |

31

FIRST FALL |

32

Excursus: Karl Barth

First Formation

Introduction

i. Out of sovereign freedom the LORD God, in the name of the Father, created the heavens and the earth. As the Father’s Word, he moved creatively into the foreground. Hence, in Gen 1–2, the Son’s covenant names, God, the LORD God, predominated. Only in the New Testament dispensation Paul clarified the distinction between the Father’s work in creation and the Son’s. First Cor 8:5–6,

. . . for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

The Lord, the pre-incarnate Jesus, in effect, created heaven and earth, his kingdom, by speaking the mighty words recorded in Gen 1. Undeniably, Christ Jesus made all reality.¹ Ps 33:6; Isa 45:12, 45:18–19, 48:13; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2; etc. Nothing compelled the Father,² or the Son, to the very good work of the beginning. With sovereign authority the LORD God called forth the whole of creation and with awesome sensitivity proclaimed his invincible and indubitable freedom³ for times of joy, Job 38:7; Prov 8:31. Creation revealed the Son’s freedom.

ii. Within creation’s wholeness the LORD God (also in the Father’s name) created the second manifestation of his freedom, the covenant, for ruling his kingdom. By way of the covenant he structured the bond from himself to people. By way of the covenant he structured the bond between people. By way of the covenant the structured the inner bond of uprightness constitutive of human nature. And by way of the covenant he structured people’s relationship to other creatures, indeed, to the entire earth. With the righteous and holy power of command, dominically, the LORD God, speaking the promises and the obligations, established his rule over the Kingdom. For this he rooted Adam and Eve in the original covenant formation.

Not, however, with traditional assessment’s heavy hand and old-school sense. [The Father] condescended to come down to the level of man, to reveal Himself as a Friend, and to enable man to improve his condition in the way of obedience. . . . He, by a positive enactment, graciously established a covenant relationship. He entered into a legal compact with man, which includes all the requirements and obligations implied in the creaturehood of man, but at the same time added some new elements.⁴ This summation calls for critical observations:

1.

All pertinent evidence in Gen

1

–

2

revealed that the Son created the covenant.

2. Friendship became a later historical development, for instance, the LORD God’s with Abraham, Isa 41:8; James 2:23; with Moses, Exod 33:11; with David, Ps 25:14; and the twelve disciples/apostles, John 15:12–17. Assertion of friendship in Gen 1–2 forced a foreign element into the creation narrative.

3. The adverbial graciously was out of place; grace, unmerited favor, belonged appropriately in the covenant structure only after the Fall. Making creation a matter of grace presupposed sin’s existence before Adam’s covenant breakage.

4.

Clarifying the covenant as a legal compact more than missed the interactive vibrancy between the promises and the obligations; in fact, this legalism coincided intricately with Coccejus, Voetius, and Witsius’ Neo-Scholastic insights. Federal Theology made the covenant a legal structure and reduced the Covenantmaker’s bond with the original human beings to the works righteousness of Pharisees, Semi-Pelagians, Arminians, etc. If so, then Adam had to earn salvation, but of this works righteousness nothing appeared in Gen

1

–

2

.

This traditional, old-school assessment of the covenant’s origin assumed that the Father first created people, then added, or superadded, the covenant. This one-two step process came out distinctly in the phrase, . . . at the same added some new elements. Obvious from Gen 1:26–27, the LORD God created the covenant at the same time as he created man.

Contrary to antiquated assumptions, covenant formation filled out the whole of the very good creation. In that fullness of time, anticipatory, the LORD God alone established forever his dominical connectedness to people, animals, and the earth.

Creation and covenant maximized in the beginning the overall fundamentals of freedom, first the LORD God’s. Within the majesty and wisdom⁵ of his liberty shone the fullness of all creative glory.

Through original covenant formation, the LORD God revealed his sovereign freedom with boundless energy, Job 38:1—39:30, to shape the essential high point of the beginning, Adam and Eve.⁶ Within creation, covenant formation praised with intensive freedom him who made all reality. On the Son the Bible’s Author, the Holy Spirit, placed rightful focus.

Covenant Basics

With breathtaking freedom and an aura of anticipation, the LORD God within his Kingdom revealed to Adam and Eve the covenant’s basic parts, first the promises, and inseparably attached thereto the obligations. He called the primary people to believe these promises and do the obligations, which set for all times the elements of human freedom. Thus the Covenantmaker with large-scale, sovereign planning formed initially Adam to live in sheer awe of the glory revealed in the founding promises and obligations, the sole terms of reference for wholeheartedly glorifying the LORD God.

Covenant Promises

Speaking the promises, the LORD God immediately projected the Covenantmaker-creature relation upon Adam, through him upon Eve, and looking ahead, upon all descendants. At the same time, believing these promises in the Paradise setting bonded the two human beings together in the essential unity of the human race. In effect, the Covenantmaker created Adam and Eve for implicitly and explicitly trusting the promises.

First Promise

On the movingly creative Sixth Day, the LORD spoke the initial promise, constituting human life. Gen 1:26a,

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

By this proclamation, the Covenantmaker created that which he spoke. Gen 1:27, So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Gen 2:7, 22. Within the immense miracle of universal creation, he made the unfathomable and distinctive, the more astonishing, creative wonder of three-dimensional human life: physically, spiritually, eternally alive in and through him.

In creating human life, likeness, repeated in Gen 5:1, 9:6, strengthened image. Through image/likeness, the LORD God made Adam his first representative with, as explained throughout Gen 2, Eve his helper. Thus image=likeness identified the original sense of personhood without for one moment abridging in any way the limitless distance between Creator and creature, nor the profound separation between human beings and other life forms—animal and plant.

The third phrase of this promise—male and female—ruled in what capacity and common solidarity before him and for each other the LORD God called human beings to execute this new created life. Gen 2:18–23.

The Covenantmaker’s leading promise, therefore, gave life to Adam and Eve for complex issues of human freedom: the first people he enlivened with righteousness, holiness, and wisdom.⁷ In these confirming landmarks of humanity the people of the beginning represented him, the LORD God, in caring for and managing the earth.

Second Promise

To maintain and develop covenant life, the LORD God revealed the second: for his own he propagated sufficiency of wholesome nourishment. Gen 1:29,

Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.

Thus the Covenantmaker provided sustenance of high quality and abundant quantity for the first parents. Adam and Eve learned, Gen 2:9, 16, 3:22b, that this food included the fruit of the tree of life.

The LORD God also provided for the animals over which he called his representatives to rule. Gen 1:30, And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. In this manner the LORD revealed the source of food for animals without, however, including these in the covenant.⁸

Hence, the second promise granted the LORD’s food source first to people. Together, Adam and Eve for the living and working to which the Covenantmaker committed them had more than sufficient nourishment.

Third Promise

The other defining promise involved living space. In this setting the first people worked together as the LORD’s representatives. Gen 2:15,

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

Hereby the Covenantmaker singled out a decisive place for Adam and Eve. Stewardship of and care for the Eden-space further determined the living bond between the LORD and his people, then also between Adam and Eve. Provision for a homeland rounded off the LORD God’s promissory labors.

These interlocking promises⁹ of life, food, and space formed the free-flowing blessings of the relation the LORD God revealed to and established between himself and the first people, between Adam and Eve, thereby also creating their internal integrity as people, and between the people relative to the rest of the creation. He called them to believe and live each divine pledge.

In sovereign freedom the creating LORD obligated himself to maintain these promises for all times, generation upon generation, thus pointing out the future of the covenant. For life, food, and space, he assumed total responsibility; in effect, he made these promises his obligations. By way of three promises the LORD God created the first part of the covenant. In almighty acts of forming people, he owned them, as indeed, all creation; since the whole was his, also the final care¹⁰ for these promises.

Covenant Obligations

With the same sovereign freedom and penetrating foresight of promise making, the LORD charged Adam with obligations. He created the first man, then the first woman, in his image, after his likeness, with this consequence: to acknowledge him the only God, worship him in faithfulness, and honor the Name.

In the creative fullness of the Sixth Day, the LORD God summoned Adam and Eve to honor the obligations. For living evidence of the covenant bond, thereby blessing them, the LORD God committed both equally to keep these righteous standards. From the moment of respective creations the two-in-Eden had to serve him with apt honor and glory.

First Obligation

As the LORD God exercised dominion over the totality of his creation-wide jurisdiction, he summoned Adam and Eve to prolonged ruling over the earth, starting in Eden. Gen 1:26b,

. . . and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

Firmly encased between Gen 1:26a and 1:27, the double promise confirming human life, Adam’s dominion opened up the fundamental meaning of image and likeness. Together the man and the woman ruled as the LORD’s representatives.

Thus, then, the LORD God called the first people to govern all life he made on earth. This dominion he translated into the work of imagebearing, the likeness of him, for his kingdom rule. Gen 2:19, So out of the ground the LORD God made every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. As the LORD’s representatives, such dominion made people people, wholly distinct from all other forms of God-created life; in this way he shaped the essence of human freedom, since for this, to honor and glorify him, he called them forth.

Second Obligation

In Eden’s receptive environment, with respect to dominion the LORD God summed up the ordinance governing the bond between Adam and Eve, husband and wife. Gen 1:28a,

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.

Immediately upon Gen 1:27, the LORD God gave the second meaning of image/likeness; as he created people, so he called and equipped them to create people—children, descendants. For that too he majestically formed Eve and paired her with Adam, Gen 2:22. In God-glorifying parental responsibilities, procreation formed the second obligation.

When Adam spoke in the marriage hour, he respected the life of the other person and honored wedlock. Gen 2:23,

"This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

The first man took as given and spoke truthfully with respect to Eve, consciously blessing her womanhood. For the two at that moment the whole of life as created ran on very good.

These two ordinances the LORD God bound intimately: in the covenant’s social bonding, rulership called for dominion and dominion for procreation—for enlarged dominion, a vision beginning with the first parents. By living these obligations, Adam and Eve revealed before the LORD God and to each other that they believed the how and wherefore of human provenance; the Covenantmaker gave them purpose in life’s global direction and mettle.

Third Obligation

The LORD God shaped the third into a restraining order. Gen 2:17,

. . . but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.

Other than this one, the LORD gave all seed-bearing fruit trees to Adam and Eve for nourishment. Only around this singular one he placed a compelling barrier: commit dereliction of this ordinance, enter this death zone, eat this forbidden fruit, and they invoked mortal peril on a still unknowable road to perdition.

The specific sense in which this one tree taught discernment between good and evil: according to Gen 2:9, the LORD God informed Adam and Eve with the conscious and deliberate ability to distinguish between the two elemental ways of morality, though in the all-encompassing harmony of the beginning they lacked experiential awareness of evil. Any discernment between good and evil rested on the ethical preventative: do not, never.

To establish this reductive in the overall edenic goodness, the LORD laid a well-defined zone about the danger tree. Within that limited place he forbad Adam and Eve to set a foot. On the destructive zone’s bright side, however, away from the tree and its fruit, shone only covenant freedom and eternal life; there the heart beat with commitment to conscious obedience. This dark ordinance the Covenantmaker commanded without writing it upon Adam’s heart;¹¹ the hearts of the first people were very good, created capable and willing to obey the third obligation.

Three covenant obligations¹² established the second series of basics the LORD God in sovereign freedom ordained for the first people. By doing these obligations they exercised dominion.¹³ In this paradoxical structuring of authority and obedience the LORD God built freedom: only as the free people of the beginning bowed thankfully to do the obligations they ruled well in Eden. Responding, Adam and Eve, by doing these obligations, promised to uphold the three. Faithfulness in this respect showed that they perceived the future of the covenant, for which they then also assumed full responsibility—on earth.

The LORD God thus created the second part of the covenant. In fact, on the Sixth Day he created the entire covenant.

Lively promises and determinant obligations constituted the living relation the LORD placed between himself and the first people, thereby forever realizing the establishment of his kingdom rule as well as ordering the communal bond between the people.¹⁴ All in all, in the covenant the LORD God designed the sensitive hallmarks of humanity in order that Adam and Eve represent him in the freedom of the patterned-for-tomorrow creation. By these promises and obligations the Covenantmaker constituted on earth the length and breadth, height and depth of his kingdom rule.

This then defined the covenant for Adam and Eve: from the LORD God they received life, food, and space, plus he granted them purpose and direction through dominion as well as procreation, including due respect for the prohibition.

Covenant Matters

Throughout Gen 1–2 the LORD God revealed by covenant formation the interwoven unity of the promises and the obligations; these formed the inseparable components of the original covenant formation. With the promises and the obligations he gave for that time and place all necessary interpretation of the ruling order pertaining to his kingdom jurisdiction in the earth.

With respect to the covenant formation, the Author joined the first two Genesis chapters in terms of the promises and the obligations; he never intended that these be perceived as two distinct creation histories. Only, old-school Genesis readers failed to distinguish properly the contents of these foundational accounts.

For a traditional, double-narrative explanation of Gen 1–2’s structure: The first narrative contains the account of the creation of all things in the order in which it occurred, while the second groups things in their relation to man, without implying anything respecting the chronological order of man’s appearance in the creative work of God, and clearly indicates that everything preceding it served to prepare a fit habitation for man as the king of creation. It shows us how man was situated in God’s creation, surrounded by the vegetable and animal world, and how he began his history.¹⁵ Another double-narrative explanation of Gen 1–2, . . . on the first pages of the Bible we do not have only one but two different accounts of creation, and that these are expanded but also partially contradicted by isolated references to the theme in the rest of the Canon.¹⁶ Over centuries, a standard Federal Theology two-history interpretation took hold.

However.

In the Gen 1–2 structure, the Author first recounted the historical creation chronologically, 1:1—2:4a. Thereupon, Gen 2:4b–25, he filled the sabbath-full Seventh Day with proclamation, or, at the very minimum, with description, a filling out of Gen 1:27. Thus, not two distinctive histories¹⁷ founded the Scriptures, only one. Hence, Gen 2 interpreted and amplified the most significant part of creation, the making of the people of the covenant activated for dominical kingdom responsibilities.

Given the nature of Gen 1–2, obviously, the LORD created the formative covenant in planning as well as execution unilaterally, without consulting Adam and Eve. The whole in all its parts and its details was from him and to him. Creation of the fundamental covenant belonged intrinsically within the divine work of the beginning, totally part and parcel of the whole. In freedom God made Adam and Eve for vigilant believing the promises and living the obligations.

Exegetical Patterns

Despite the promises and obligations’ clarity, subbiblical conventions crept into covenant studies. These involved a cultural mandate, a covenant of redemption, a covenant of works, a covenant of grace, Adam’s headship, condescension, etc.

Cultural Mandate

A seventeenth century invention, this mandate destabilized covenant studies, stymieing promise-and-obligation research. At cross purposes to biblical interpretation, legalistically driven scholars based this alleged mandate on Gen. 1:28b, . . . fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. Selecting one version, the cultural mandate meant, . . . clearly a very expressive figure of speech for, first, intense study of the earth (with all of its intricate processes and complex systems) and, then, utilization of this knowledge for the benefit of the earth’s inhabitants, both animal and human. Here is the primeval commission to man authorizing both science and technology as man’s basic enterprise relative to the earth.¹⁸

Critical Observations:

1.

Twentieth and twenty-first century sciences and technologies never belonged in the Gen

1

–

2

context.

2.

The cultural mandate idea from its start lacked awareness of Gen

1

–

2

’s initial impact, that is, dominion then and there. More pointed, this cultural-mandate version missed demonstrating where else in the Bible it also came to light.

For a milder form of this alleged mandate. "It enjoins us to bring every type of cultural activity within the service of God. Indeed, there is a dynamic element to ‘the image of God.’ God himself is revealed or ‘imaged’ in his creation precisely as we are busy within the creation, developing its hidden potentials in agriculture, art, music, commerce, politics, scholarship, family life, church, leisure, and so on, in ways that honor God. As we take God’s creative commands of ‘Let there be . . .’ and develop the potentials in them, we continue to spread the fragrance of his presence throughout the world he has made."¹⁹

Critical Observations:

1.

The Arminian sounding as shifted attention from the Gen

1

:

28

command structure down the gradient of human willingness.

2. Nothing appeared within Gen 1–2 to explain the sense of art, music, commerce, politics, scholarship, church, leisure, etc., not within Gen 1:28’s then-and-there physical surroundings.

An interpretive catchphrase as cultural mandate insensitively lifted Gen 1:28 out of its historical connections into a much later time frame. The above definitions reflected other difficulties too.

3. Cultural-mandate versions functioned more for the benefit of an abstract humanity, less for the glory of the LORD God.

4. Cultural-mandate versions failed to struggle with Gen 1:28’s covenantal meaning for that time and at that place.

5. Reference to science/technology fitted elsewhere in the covenant’s development. Adam and Eve sinned before time and opportunity to open seriously the original covenant way of life.²⁰

6.

With pedestrian effort cultural-mandate proponents lifted Gen

1

:

28

b out of its context; then the idea, with unsavory transitions to more modern eras, assumed an unscriptural identity and impetus of its own.

Hence, in general, any cultural mandate in Gen 1–2 misrepresented Scripture; they who worked with this invention never meshed it with the promises and the obligations, nor related it to the reality of covenant formation. All versions then of this mandate erected walls against believing and understanding the covenant, for attention on this fiction swept away the actuality of the obligations.

Covenant of Redemption

Neo-Scholastics presupposed several types of prehistoric covenants.²¹ 1) Between God and man—man possibly qualified as the sinner, the elect, or man in Christ. 2) Between God the Father, representing the Trinity, and Christ Jesus—Christ Jesus representing the elect. 3) A covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son, the basis of an alleged historical covenant of grace.²² Based on Neo-Scholastic fantasy and dried-out biblical understanding, this covenant of redemption allegedly existed, before the LORD God created all things.

1.

Scripture clearly points to the fact that the plan of redemption was included in the eternal decree or counsel of God, Eph.

1

:

4

ff.;

3

:

11

; II Thess.

2

:

13

; II Tim.

1

:

9

; Jas.

2

:

5

; I Pet.

1

:

2

, etc. Now we find that in the economy of redemption there is, in a sense, a division of labor: the Father is the originator, the Son the executor, and the Holy Spirit the applier. This can only be the result of a voluntary agreement among the persons of the Trinity, so that their internal relations assume the form of a covenant of life. In fact, it is exactly in the trinitarian life that we find the archetype of the historical covenants, a covenant in the proper and fullest sense of the word, the parties meeting on a footing of equality, a true suntheke.

2.

There are passages of Scripture which not only point to the fact that the plan of God for the salvation of sinners was eternal, Eph.

1

:

4

;

3

:

9

,

11

, but also indicate that it was of the nature of a covenant. Christ speaks of promises made to Him before his advent, and repeatedly refers to a commission which He had received from the Father, John

5

:

30

,

43

;

6

:

38

-

40

;

17

:

4

-

12

. And in Rom.

5

:

12

-

21

and

1

Cor.

15

:

22

He is clearly regarded as a representative head, that is, as the head of a covenant."²³

Critical Observations:

1.

This sort of reasoning, speculative, gave voice to seventeenth century rationalization with respect to a prehistoric covenant of redemption, apparently a thing not created, or, a creation before creation.

2. The first textual list actually pointed out mysteries of predestination rather than an alleged prehistoric covenant.

3. The second list spoke to matters other than covenantal, the bond between the Father and the Son, without any reference to a covenant.

4.

Neo-Scholastics, preoccupied with predestination, that is, the salvation of sinners, missed the larger purpose with respect to covenant matters.

To make covenant-of-redemption speculation more speculative? "Though the covenant of redemption is the eternal basis of the covenant of grace, and, as far as sinners are concerned, also the eternal prototype, it was for Christ a covenant of works rather than a covenant of grace. For Him the law of the original covenant applied, namely, that eternal life could only be obtained by meeting the demands of the law. As the last Adam Christ obtains eternal life for sinners in reward for faithful obedience, and not at all as an unmerited gift of grace.²⁴ And what He has done as the Representative and Surety of all His people, they are no more in duty bound to do. The work has been done, the reward is merited, and believers are made partakers of the fruits of Christ’s accomplished work through grace.²⁵ More. In the Covenant in the