Since the middle of the nineteenth century scholars have questioned whether Reformed orthodoxy represented a corruption of, a reaction to, or an authentic development of the early Reformed theology of Martin Bucer (1491–1551), Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575), and John Calvin (1509–1564).1 This approach sees a movement from a vital movement to an institutional corruption of that vitality.2 In the middle of the nineteenth century, Heinrich Heppe (1820–79) pioneered the second of these approaches portraying Reformed covenant or federal theology as a Melanchthonian reaction to Calvin’s alleged predestinarian dogmatism.3 A third approach finds two competing traditions with Reformed theology, one gracious and covenantal and the other
1 For a concise survey of the older approach to Reformed orthodoxy see Richard A. Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology From Calvin to Perkins (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986; reprint Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 1–13. For a survey of the secondary literature on the rise and development of Reformed covenant theology to the early 1980s see David A. Weir, The Origins of the Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century Reformation Thought (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1990), 22–36.
2 Briggs, ibid, 7. The “kerygma to dogma” historiography continues to find adherents. See N. Diemer, Het Scheppinsverbond Met Adam (Het Verbond Der Werken) (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1935), Brian G. Armstrong, Calvin and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), R. T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), Alan C. Clifford, Atonement and Justification: English Evangelical Theology 1640–1790: An Evaluation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 69–105.
3 The terms “covenant” and “federal” will be used interchangeably in this essay. Geerhardus Vos observed, however, that Heppe later revised his view. In 1879 he concluded that covenant theology arose in Switzerland. See Geerhardus Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin (Philipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1980), 235. See Heinrich Heppe, Heinrich Heppe, Geschichte Des Pietismus Und Der Mystik in Der Reformiertem Kirche (Leiden: Brill, 1879). See Lyle D. Bierma, “The Role of Covenant Theology in Early Reformed Orthodoxy,” Sixteenth Century Journal 21 (1990): 453–62, idem, “Federal Theology in the Sixteenth Century: Two Traditions?,” Westminster Theological Journal 45 (1983): 304–21, idem, German Calvinism in the Confessional Age: The Covenant Theology of Caspar Olevianus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 141–84, idem, “Law and Grace in Ursinus’ Doctrine of the Natural Covenant: A Reappraisal,” in Protestant Scholasticism, 96–110.
mailto:rsclark@wscal.eduPage 2
conditional, legal, and federal.4 The fourth approach, applying the historiographical model of Heiko Oberman (1930–2001) to the study of Reformed orthodoxy,5 sees Reformed theology as developing organically from the Reformation to post-Reformation orthodoxy.6 This essay is most sympathetic with the fourth approach and argues that Reformed orthodoxy saw federal or covenant theology as a redemptive-historical way of expressing substantially the same Reformation theology taught in their dogmatic works and confessional symbols.7 Christ was as central to the federal theology of orthodoxy as he was to sixteenth-century Reformed theology. The difference was more a matter of context than substance. The first generation writers were establishing a Reformed church. Reformed orthodoxy consolidated those gains in ecclesiastical confessions and articulated that theology in an increasingly complex and demanding intellectual context. The Reformed orthodox were facing increasingly complex challenges from Socinianism and other forms of rationalism, e.g. Rene Descartes (1596–1650) and Christian Wolff (1679–1754), from internal challenges such as the Remonstrants and Amyraldianism, and a reinvigorated Roman Catholic critique of Reformed theology. This adaptation of the Reformation to the early modern academy did not mean, for the orthodox, an abandonment of Scripture. For the early Reformed and for orthodoxy, biblical exegesis, biblical
4 Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 365–97, Leonard J. Trinterud, “The Origins of Puritanism,” Church History 20 (1951): 37–57, J. B. Torrance, “Covenant Or Contract? A Study of the Theological Background of Worship in the Seventeenth Century,” Scottish Journal of Theology 23 (1970): 51–76. Peter A. Lillback’s approach has elements of the discontinuity and continuity arguments as he sees the covenant of works in Calvin’s theology. See Peter A. Lillback, The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology, Text and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 277–304. Among those argue a more organic, developmental historiography see Geerhardus Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” 234–67, Lyle D. Bierma, “Federal Theology in the Sixteenth Century: Two Traditions?,” Westminster Theological Journal 45 (1983): 304–21, R. Scott Clark, and Joel R. Beeke, “Ursinus, Oxford and the Westminster Divines,” in The Westminster Confession Into the 21st Century: Essays in Remembrance of the 350th Anniversary of the Publication of the Westminster Confession of Faith, ed. Ligon Duncan (Ross-Shire, UK: Mentor, 2003), 1–32, R. Scott Clark, Caspar Olevian and the Substance of the Covenant: The Double Benefit of Christ, Rutherford Studies in Historical Theology (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 2005).
5 E.g. see Heiko A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963; reprint Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1983), idem, Forerunners of the Reformation Illustrated By Key Documents, trans. Paul L. Nyhus (London: Lutterworth Press, 1967), 3–65, idem, The Dawn of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992).
6 See Richard A. Muller, Richard A. Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology From Calvin to Perkins (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986; reprint Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), idem, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, Ca. 1520 to Ca. 1725, 4 vols. 2nd edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003).
7 See also Clark, Caspar Olevian, 137–91. On the complexity and development of covenant theology in Reformed orthodoxy see Richard A. Muller, “The Federal Motif in Seventeenth-Century Arminian Theology,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiednis 62 (1982): 102–22, idem, “The Covenant of Works and the Stability of Divine Law in Seventeenth-Century Reformed Orthodoxy: A Study in the Theology of Herman Witsius and Wilhelmus à Brakel,” Calvin Theological Journal 29 (1994): 75–101, idem, “Divine Covenants, Absolute and Conditional: John Cameron and the Early Orthodox Development of Reformed Covenant Theology,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 17 (2006): 11–56, idem, “Toward the Pactum Salutis: Locating the Origins of a Concept,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 18 (2007): 11–66.Page 3
theology, and dogmatic theology were integrally related.8 This shift to a more academic orientation led to more thorough investigation and explanation of the biblical text. This essay argues that, in response to several external stimuli and in response to the need to develop a more coherent and comprehensive covenant theology, orthodoxy elaborated on the basic themes of Protestant theology (e.g., justification sola gratia, sola fide, solo Christo) as it explained its theology in redemptive-historical terms of three covenants: a pre-temporal covenant of redemption (pactum salutis) between the Father and the Son, a historical covenant of works between God and Adam as the federal head of humanity (foedus operum), and a covenant of grace with the elect, in Christ, administered through a series of covenants from Adam to Christ. Following Muller’s periodization of Reformed orthodoxy, this essay will survey representative Reformed theologians, in Europe and Britain, from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century.
Federal Theology Before OrthodoxyReformed federal theology did not occur de novo in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. It synthesized and developed basic themes in Christian theology from the entire tradition. Many of the major elements of what would become known as federal theology were present in the patristic period.9 The early fathers used covenantal or federal ideas in several ways: To explain the transmission of sin (e.g., Augustine taught a prelapsarian covenant of works),10 to demonstrate the essential unity of the history of salvation, second to defend the propriety of the inclusion of Gentiles into the church, third, to explain the discontinuity between the old and new covenants in Scripture, and fourth to explain Christian ethics. In the medieval period, a covenant theology that verged toward Pelagianism was advanced by several late medieval theologians, most notably William of Ockham (1285–1347), Robert Holcot (c. 1290–1349), and Gabriel Biel (1420–95). God was said to have made a covenant whereby “to those who do what is in themselves, God does not deny grace.”11 This form of covenant theology was interpreted both by contemporary critics, such as Thomas Bradwardine (c. 1290–c.1349),12 and by the Protestant Reformers as Pelagianizing. Thus, as his
8 Richard A. Muller and John L. Thompson, “The Significance of Precritical Exegesis: Retrospect and Prospect,” in Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation, 345. For more on this see R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession: Our Theology, Piety, and Practice (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008), 197–207.
9 See J. Ligon Duncan, “The Covenant Idea in Ante-Nicene Theology” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1995), Everett F. Ferguson, “The Covenant Idea in the Second Century,” in Texts and Testaments: Critical Essays on the Bible an Early Church Fathers: Volume in Honor of Stuart Dickson Currie, ed. March. W. Eugene, and Stuart Dickson Currie (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1980), 135–62.
10 De civitate Dei, 16:27. See J. P. Migne, ed. Patrologiæ Latina, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844), 41.506.
11 “Facientibus quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam.” See Oberman, Forerunners, 142–74 for translations of sources, idem, Oberman, Harvest, 129–45, William J. Courtenay, “Covenant and Causality in Pierre D’ailly,” Speculum 46 (1971): 94–119, Heiko A. Oberman, The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications, trans. A. A. Gow (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), 104–05.
12 Thomas Bradwardine, De Causa Dei Contra Pelagianorum (London: 1618).Page 4
Protestant convictions developed gradually (from 1513–21),13 Luther categorically rejected the covenant theology of Ockham, Holcott, and Biel. Though it has been suggested that part of Luther’s development to Protestantism entailed a wholesale rejection of all forms of covenant theology,14 one finds a perhaps unexpected degree of interest in the biblical theology of the covenants in his lectures on Genesis late in his career.15
Among Reformed writers, e.g. Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), and Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531), and Martin Bucer (1491–1551), discussion of the biblical teaching about “the covenant” (foedus) grew in length and intensity from the early 1520s through the middle of the century.16 In 1523 Zwingli was already observing how biblical terms such as foedus, pactum, and testamentum are used in Scripture interchangeably and yet sometimes with slightly different shades of meaning depending upon the context.17 Amandus Polanus (1561–1610) considered Oecolampadius to be the first Reformed covenant theologian.18 In his 1525 exposition of Isaiah Oecolampadius began to sketch out the basis for the doctrine of the pactum salutis.19 In its most developed form, the pactum salutis or counsel of peace (consilium pacis) held that the Father and the Son entered into an agreement as part of which the Son agreed to become the guarantor (or sponsor) or surety of the redemption of the elect, requiring him to
13 R. Scott Clark, “Iustitia Imputata,” 269–310.
14 Kenneth Hagen, “From Testament to Covenant in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Sixteenth Century Journal 3 (1972): 1–24.
15 See his exposition of Genesis 2:16–17 and chapter 17. Though he did not discuss a “covenant of works” by name in his exposition of Genesis 2, the substance of his exposition is compatible with the later Reformed understanding. See Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, 55 vols. (St Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1958), 1.103–15, 3.75–175, Martin Luther, Luthers Werke Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: H. H. Böhlau, 1883), 42.80–87, 601–73.
16 Oecolampadius used the word foedus in a 1521 sermon on the Lord’s Supper in Johannes Oecolampadius, Ioan Oecolampadii Sermo De Sacramento Eucharistiae (Augsburg, 1521), 3. Zwingli appealed to the “promises concerning the eternal covenant” in passing in a1522 treatise, Huldrych Zwingli, De Casta, Intermerata Semperque Virgine Maria (Zürich, 1545), 347.
17 Huldrych Zwingli, Opus Articulorum Sive Conclusionem Huldrychi Zuinglii (Zurich, 1545), 33, idem, Huldrych Zwingli, Selected Writings of Huldrych Zwingli, trans. E. J. Furcha and H. Wayne Pipkin, 2 vols., vol. 12, Pittsburgh Theological Monographs. New Series (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1984), 1.106. The most comprehensive study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century usage of the key terms is Lee, “Biblical Exegesis, Federal Theology,” 15–85.
18 Amandus Polanus, De Vita Oecolampadii (Basel, 1606) as cited in A. A. Woolsey, “Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought: A Study in the Reformed Tradition to the Westminster Assembly” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Glasgow, 1988), 1.122.
19 Johannes Oecolampadius, In Iesaiam Prophetam…Hoc Est Commentarium (Basel, 1525), 220b–221a, 268a.Page 5
provide the perfect, substitutionary obedience and death owed by the elect and the Father agreed to give a people to the Son and to accept his vicarious obedience.20
In the 1520s, as the Anabaptists mounted their challenge to infant baptism and to the unity of the covenant of grace, Reformed writers paid increased attention to the covenant of grace. This focus is evident in Heinrich Bullinger’s 1534 De Testamento Seu Foedere Dei Unico Et Aeterno, Oecolampadius’ 1534 commentary on Hebrews, and in Bucer’s massive 1536 commentary on Romans.21
Because of the elevated status granted to John Calvin in the twentieth century, his relation to covenant theology has been disputed by those who rejected Reformed orthodoxy in the modern period.22 It is true that there is relatively little of the later technical vocabulary (e.g. pactum salutis, foedus operum) in Calvin’s opera. If, however, one asks whether, for Calvin, there was an eternal agreement between the Father and the Son concerning the redemption of the elect, whether Adam was the federal representative of the human race, whether in him, all humanity broke the law, and whether Christ came to render obedience to that law promulgated in creation,23 and whether fallen humans are justified before God by in a covenant of grace sola fide and whether those in the visible church are consequently obligated to obey the moral law of God, then Calvin’s answers to such questions resonate quite strongly with the earlier covenant theology of the Swiss Reformed and the covenant theology of the late sixteenth century and of seventeenth-century orthodoxy.24 Early Reformed Orthodoxy
20 For the development of the doctrine of the pactum salutis see Richard A. Muller, “Toward the Pactum Salutis: Locating the Origins of a Concept,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 18 (2007): 11–66, R. Scott Clark and David VanDrunen, “The Covenant Before the Covenants,” in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry, 167–73, See Carol A. Williams, “The Decree of Redemption is in Effect a Covenant: David Dickson and the Covenant of Redemption” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Calvin Theological Seminary, 2005), 49–118.
21 Zurich, 1534. The English translation is published in Charles S. McCoy, and J. Wayne Baker, Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenantal Tradition With a Translation of De Testamento Seu Foedere Dei Unico Et Aeterno (1534) (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), 99–134. Johannes Oecolampadius, In Epistolam Ad Hebraeos, Ioannis Oecolampadii Explanationes (Strasbourg, 1534) uses forms of foedus 44 times. Martin Bucer, Metaphrasis et Enarratio in Epistolam D. Pauli Apostoli Ad Romanos (Basel, 1562). On Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, and Calvin see R. Scott Clark, “The Benefits of Christ: Double Justification in Protestant Theology Before the Westminster Assembly,” in The Faith Once Delivered: Essays in Honor of Wayne R. Spear, ed. Anthony T. Selvaggio (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 107–34.
22 On problematic modern views of Calvin see Richard A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), idem, : Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3–102.
23 On Calvin’s doctrine of natural revelation and natural law see R. Scott Clark, “Calvin on the Lex Naturalis,” Stulos Theological Journal 6 (1998): 1–22, David VanDrunen, “The Context of Natural Law: John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms,” Journal of Church and State 46 (2004): 503–25, Stephen J. Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics, Emory University Studies in Law and Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).
24 In this connection see Lillback’s somewhat idiosyncratic presentation of Calvin’s covenant theology in The Binding of God. This work demonstrates that the doctrine of the covenants was more than a passing interest of Calvin’s and that his use of the covenants is more like that of orthodoxy than many scholars have been willing to admit.Page 6
One of the historiographical difficulties in the study of Reformed federal theology is the assumption that it represents an approach to theology distinct from Reformed orthodoxy. This essay argues the contrary view, that essentially the same Reformed theology may be found in topical/systematic presentation such as in De Religione Christiana Fides (c.1586) by Girolamo Zanchi (1516–90) or in Amandus Polanus’ Syntagma (1612) as in more overtly redemptive-historical approaches, such as Caspar Olevianus’ De Substantia foederis inter Deum et Electos (1585) or Cocceius’ Doctrinae de Foedere et Testamento Dei (1653).25 In his Reformed dogmatics, Polanus taught substantially the same theology of the covenants that other writers taught from a redemptive-historical perspective. Four writers illustrate the developing sophistication of Reformed federalism in the late sixteenth century. The first two were the chief authors of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Zacharias Ursinus (1534–83) and Caspar Olevianus (1536–87), the third is French theologian and biblical scholar Franciscus Junius (1545–1602), and the fourth is the Scottish theologian Robert Rollock (1555–99). Ursinus lectured on the covenant theology of the Heidelberg Catechism in the University and in the seminary (Collegium Sapientiae) for about fifteen years and later, until his death, at his school in Neustadt.26 His covenant theology is clear from his lectures and Summa Theologiae (1561–62) which reflected his theological lectures.27 The foedus first appears in a question about the law. He answered the question in federal terms by equating the law revealed to Adam with a prelapsarian covenant, which he contrasted with the gracious postlapsarian covenant and the consequent obligation of the Christian sanctity.28
Ursinus used the nouns foedus, pactum, and testamentum interchangeably.29 He distinguished sharply between the law or the covenant of nature and the gospel or the covenant of grace. The former is a command to obey and live. The latter is a promise of life through faith
25 Johannes Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae de Foedere et Testamento Dei (Leiden, 1653). Girolamo Zanchi, De Religione Christiana Fides-Confession of Christian Religion, 2 vols., Studies in the History of Christian Thought (Leiden: Brill, 2007). This work is rather more focused on the theme of union with Christ than on the history of redemption or the covenants and illustrates the diversity in the various pedagogical approaches to Reformed theology in this period. Amandus Polanus, Syntagma Theologiae Christianae (Geneva: 1612), Caspar Olevianus, De Substantia Foederis Gratuiti Inter Deum Et Electos (Geneva: 1585). It should be noted, however, that the first half of De Substantia was organized topically as an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed.
26 On Ursinus’ life see Derk Visser, Zacharius Ursinus: The Reluctant Reformer. His Life and Times (New York: United Church Press, 1983). On his theology see idem, Controversy and Conciliation: The Reformation and the Palatinate, 1559–1583. Pittsburgh Theological Monographs. New Series 18 (Allison Park, Pa: Pickwick Publications, 1986), idem, “The Covenant in Zacharias Ursinus,” Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987): 531–44, Bierma, “Law and Grace,” Clark and Beeke, “Ursinus, Oxford, and the Westminster Divines.”
27 The Latin text of the Summa Theologiae is available in Zacharias Ursinus, Opera Theologica, 3 vols. (Heidelberg, 1612), 1.12–33 and in Karl Jakob Sudhoff, C. Olevianus und Z. Ursinus (Elberfeld: R. L. Friderichs, 1857), 152–99. The English text is in Lyle D. Bierma, et al., An Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism: Sources, History, and Theology, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 163–223. The English translations provided here are the author’s. Where archaic English translations are quoted, the spelling has been modernized.
28 Ursinus, Opera, 1.12.
29 Ursinus, Summa, Q. 32, Opera, 1.14, idem, Corpus Doctrinae Ecclesiarum a Papatu Romano Reformatarum (Hanover, 1634), 92.Page 7
in Christ.30 This distinction was fundamental to the Protestant Reformation and constituted a rejection of the ancient old-law/new-law hermeneutic.31 What is most significant for our purpose is that Ursinus recast the Protestant hermeneutic in covenantal terms. The prelapsarian covenant is legal. The postlapsarian covenant is a gracious, gospel covenant.32 He defined sin as the violation of the divine law, not a fall from grace.33 The covenant of grace is the source of the “hope of eternal life.”34 It is “reconciliation with God obtained by the intercession of Christ, in which God promises, to those who believe him, for Christ’s sake, that he will always be a gracious father and will give them eternal life.”35 The gospel teaches “what God promises to us in his covenant of grace, how we are received into it and that we know we are in it, that is, how we are liberated from sin and death and how we are certain of that liberation.”36 He defined “keeping the covenant of grace” as receiving “by true faith, Christ and all his benefits offered to you.”37 Faith is a “firma fiducia” that the “forgiveness of sins, righteousness and eternal life are freely given by God for the sake of Christ’s merits….” This was virtually the definition of faith condemned by the Council of Trent.38
The moral and spiritual obligations of the covenant of grace are not a new covenant of works. They are consequences of for the redeemed, who live in union and communion with Christ, administered in the context of the means of grace. The conditions of the covenant of grace are in its administration, not in its essence. For Ursinus, the sole instrument of justification was faith in Christ the mediator of the covenant of grace.39
Ursinus also appealed to the unity of the covenant of grace to explain the continuity of salvation under Moses and Christ. There was one covenant of grace established after the fall. The discrimen between the old and new covenants is not the substance of the covenant but, implicitly, the accidents, i.e. the types and shadows of the “vetus foedus” fulfilled by Christ.40 For Ursinus, the old testament saints were regarded as Christians who anticipated the reality and new testament saints are those who enjoy the reality promised: God the Son incarnate as the substitute
30 On this see R. Scott Clark, “Letter and Spirit: Law and Gospel in Reformed Preaching,” in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry, 340–50.
31 Clark, “Letter and Spirit,” 331–40.
32 Ursinus, Summa, Q. 34, Opera, 1.14.
33 Ursinus, Opera, 1.13, Summa Q. 23.
34 Ursinus, Summa, Q. 30, Ursinus, Opera, 1.13.
35 Ursinus, Summa, Q. 31, Opera, 1.13.
36 Ursinus, Summa, Q. 35, Opera, 1.14. See also Q. 36, Opera, 1, 14.
37 Ursinus, Summa, Q. 37, Opera, 1.14), Henricus Denzinger, ed. Enchiridion Symbolorum Et Declarationum De Rebus Fidei Et Morum (Barcelona: Herder, 1963), 378–79.
38 Ursinus, Summa, Q. 38, Opera, 1.14.
39 Clark and Beeke, “Ursinus, Oxford, and the Westminster Divines,” 29–31.
40 Ursinus, Corpus Doctrinae, 94–95.Page 8
law-keeper and ascended mediator for his people.41 As Richard Muller has noted Ursinus’ definition of the covenant of grace was conditioned by his doctrine of Christ as mediator of that covenant.42 Caspar Olevianus wrote two popular German catechisms and three Latin expositions of the Apostles’ Creed as well as several Latin biblical commentaries.43 Three themes that emerged gradually in Olevianus’ theology from the mid-1560s over the next twenty years, would become basic to Reformed doctrine in the seventeenth century: The first theme is the pre-temporal pactum salutis, the second is of a creational, universal law given to Adam, the third is of the republication of the covenant of works under Moses, and the fourth is the essential unity of the covenant of grace despite varied historical administrations. These themes are interwoven through his 1567 Vester Grund.44 He began with Adam as the federal head of humanity in whom the law was “implanted” as a matter of “human nature” and it was this law that was “repeated and renewed in God’s Commandments.” The law promised eternal life condition of perfect inward and outward obedience.45 He was working with the same ideas that would become the covenant of grace. In contrast with the legal covenant, the covenant of grace is found in the “Surety who completely satisfies the just judgment of God for us.”46 God the Son incarnate came to be that “Surety and Mediator (bürgen und Mitler).”47 He raised the question why salvation is “presented to us in the form of a covenant of a covenant, indeed a covenant of grace?” The intent is to foster assurance that an “eternal peace and friendship with God has been made through the sacrifice of his son.”48 This redemption is grounded in God’s oath and promise that he “would have his only begotten Son become human and die for us….”49 This “eternal covenant” (ewigen bund) was ratified by Christ through his death on the cross.50 To the redeemed, to those united to Christ by faith through operation of the Spirit, the benefits of the covenant of grace, justification and sanctification, are imparted by the
41 Ursinus, Summa, Q. 33, Opera, 1.14.
42 Muller, Christ and the Decree, 96–97. See also Clark and Beeke, “Ursinus, Oxford, and the Westminster Divines,” 23–31.
43 See Clark, Caspar Olevian, 14, 91–100, 110–14, 141–48, idem, “Olevianus and the Old Perspective on Paul,” 15–26, idem, “Olevianus and Paul,” in Paul in the Reformation, ed. R. Ward Holder (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
44 Caspar Olevianus, A Firm Foundation. An Aid to Interpreting the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. Lyle D. Bierma, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995), 3–5.
45 Olevianus, A Firm Foundation, 9.
46 Olevianus, A Firm Foundation, 3.
47 Caspar Olevianus, Vester Grund (Herborn, 1590), 3 in Franz Gunther, et al., eds. Der Gnadenbund Gottes (Herborn, 1590; reprint, Bonn: Rheinland Verlag, 1994), 43.
48 Olevianus, Firm Foundation, 5.
49 Olevianus, Firm Foundation, 5.
50 Olevianus, Vester Grund, 4.Page 9
Spirit.51 Olevianus’ use of these categories contributed significantly to the development of what would become known as the pactum salutis.52
In 1576, in his Expositio Symboli Apostolici,53 he distinguished sharply between two “spiritual” kingdoms, the “kingdom of darkness” and the “kingdom of light.” He correlated the kingdom of Christ, the church and the administration of the means of grace, and the covenant of grace.54 All baptized Christians are members of the visible church but only those who have repented and embraced Christ by faith are “citizens of the kingdom of Christ” (“regni Christi cives”).55
It has already been observed that, for Olevianus, the law given in creation was “repeated and renewed” in the Mosaic law.56 The creature “by the very fact of the law of creation” is “obligated to obedience toward the Creator.”57 He described the creational law as the “knowledge of God naturally implanted” and “the work of the law by nature written on the heart” so that sin is “against the law of nature.”58 He identified the substance of the “law of nature” known by the Gentiles with the decalogue revealed to the Jews.59 The itself is righteous, but because humans are fallen in Adam and therefore corrupt, the law of nature, like the law of Moses, is adequate to convict but never to justify.60 The theme of the republication of the creational law under Moses was closely related to his developing doctrine of a natural, legal, prelpsarian covenant. Indeed, his discussions of the creational law often move fluidly into discussions of the Mosaic law, which he described as the “foedus legale.”61 In his explanation of our inability to observe the Mosaic law, he correlated it to obligation to obey “the law of creation” (ius creationis) and then he moved immediately back to the discussion of the Mosaic law and circumcision.62 This natural obligation is written on human minds and on the two tables of the law.63 The law, whether published in creation, in the “natural
51 Olevianus, Vester Grund, 4.
52 See Clark, Caspar Olevian, 177–80.
53 Caspar Olevianus, Expositio Symboli Apostolici (Frankfurt, 1576).
54 Olevianus, Expositio, 1–3.
55 Olevianus, Expositio, 2.
56 Olevianus, Firm Foundation, 9.
57 Olevianus, De Substantia, 113.
58 Olevianus, Expositio, 6.
59 Caspar Olevianus, In Epistolam D. Pauli Apostoli Ad Romanos Notae, Ex Concionibus G. Oleviani Excerptae (Geneva: 1579), 27, 30.
60 Olevianus, Ad Romanos, 35, 53, 57–60.
61 E.g., Olevianus, Ad Romanos Notae, 270, 296, idem, De Substantia, 90, 113.
62 Olevianus, De Substantia, 113.
63 Olevianus, De Substantia, 251.Page 10
pact,”64 or under Moses, demands perfect obedience and convicts the unrighteous of their sin and prepares them to hear the gospel and to receive it by faith.65 This is the distinction (discrimen) between law and gospel.66 For Olevianus “the law” functioned as a hermeneutical category, a type of speech which is found in nature and in the Mosaic revelation, or anywhere God says: “do this and live.”67 Only under the gospel, through faith (“per fidem”) is one relieved from the curse upon disobedience.68 The substance of the covenant of grace, that which makes it what it is, remains constant. The types and shadows of the Mosaic are “accidental” or non-essential to the covenant of grace. 69
Franciscus Junius (1545–1602), trained in Reformed theology at Geneva and later professor of theology at Heidelberg and Leiden, devoted two chapters in his 1584 Theses Theologicae to covenant theology.70 He taught a mutual covenant between God the Father, “in the Son of his love with our first parents, initiated in the garden of Eden, promising supernatural life” and by virtue of which they in turn owed to God reverent worship and obedience.71 He distinguished the covenant of works from the covenant of grace, made with Adam post lapsum and renewed with Abraham.72 He criticized the “most crass error,” of the Anabaptists and Servetus, of denying the essential unity of the covenant of grace.73 Within the general framework of the unity of the covenant of grace, he described in some detail the legal, typological, and pedagogical aspects of the Mosaic covenant the “scope” of which was teach the Israelites to repent and to look forward to Christ.74
These developments in Reformed theology were transmitted from the Palatinate to Robert Rollock (c.1555–98), the founding professor of the University of Edinburgh.75 In his Treatise on
64 Olevianus, De Substantia, 407.
65 Olevinaus, Ad Romanos Notae, 133, idem, De Substantia, 254.
66Olevianus, Ad Romanos Notae, 148.
67 See R. Scott Clark, “Do This and Live: Christ’s Active Obedience as the Ground of Justification,” in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry: Essays By the Faculty of Westminster Seminary California, ed. R. Scott Clark (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), 331–64.
68 Olevianus, De Substantia, 254.
69 Clark, Caspar Olevian, 58–63.
70 Abraham Kuyper, ed. Opuscula Theologica Selecta (Amsterdam: F. Muller, 1882), 183–191.
71 Junius, Theses Theologicae, 25.3.
72 Junius, Theses Theologicae, 25.19.
73 Junius, Theses Theologicae, 25.22, 48. He was particularly critical of the Anabaptist denial that the “children of believers” are “confederates” in the covenant of grace.
74 Junius, Theses Theologicae, 25.28–34, 39. See also Kuyper, Opuscula, 190–91.
75 Clark, Caspar Olevian, xv. Rollock catechized students in the Heidelberg Catechism and used Ursinus’ lectures on the catechism as a text. A. A. Woolsey, “Robert Rollock (1555–1598): Principle, Theologian, Preacher,” in Select Works of Robert Rollock, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Woodrow Society, 1844; reprint, Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008), 1.5–6.Page 11
Effectual Calling, a quodlibetal work focusing on soteriology, Rollock considered the question of how sinners come to faith considering the covenants of works and grace.76 Rollock described the entire biblical revelation as “God’s Word or Covenant…for God speaks nothing to man without the covenant.”77 When thinking of the promise of acceptance with God and eternal life, he spoke of one covenant or promise with two distinct conditions: the first is “the covenant of works; the second is the covenant of grace.”78 When thinking of the conditions, however, he spoke of two covenants: the prelapsarian covenant of works (foedus operum) and the postlapsarian covenant of grace. He described the covenant of works as “a legal or natural covenant, founded in nature, which by creation was pure and holy, and in the law of God” which, like the earlier writers, was said to be written on the human heart.79 In this legal, natural covenant of works, Adam was promised eternal life “under the condition of holy and good works.” Rollock was much more elaborate on the nature of the covenant of works than Olevianus or Ursinus had been. For example, he was explicit that, because Adam was created with “original righteousness…the thing promised in the covenant of works is life eternal first, not righteousness.”80 He allowed that one might say that “the righteousness of works was promised in that covenant,” in which case, after Adam had completed his obedience, which was implicitly limited to a probationary period, God would “pronounce and declare him to be just.”81 In that case there would be a “double righteousness:” that of his natural integrity, which is the ground of the covenant of works, and that “justice of works” performed under the covenant of works.82 He also saw the creational law and covenant republished, under Moses, in the Decalogue, and as for Olevianus, this republication served as a proof of the existence of a covenant of works.83 By the second half of the sixteenth century, the doctrines of the covenant of works and the republication of the law under Moses as a sort of pedagogical covenant of works were becoming well established. For Rollock to speak of the gospel is to speak of the covenant of grace (foedus gratuiti sive Evangelii).84 The sole condition of “the promise which is in the covenant of grace” is faith.85
76 Robert Rollock, Tractatus De Vocatione Efficaci (Edinburgh, 1597), idem, Treatise of Our Effectual Calling, in Select Works, 1.29–288.
77 Rollock, Tractatus, 8.
78Rollock, Tractatus, 8, See also idem, Questiones Et Responsiones Aliquot De Foedere Dei (Edinburgh, 1596), 3).
79 Rollock, Tractatus, 9.
80 Rollock, Tractatus, 10.
81 Rollock, Tractatus, 10.
82 Rollock, Tractatus, 10–11, idem, Questiones Et Responsiones, 3–4.
83 Rollock, Tractatus, 9.
84 Rollock, Tractatus, 1.
85 Rollock, Tractatus, 1.Page 12
He was determined that covenant of works should not be confused with the covenant of grace. For example, when one finds demands in the covenant of grace for obedience and good works, one “may not think that God speaks unto them after the form of the covenant of works….” Those, who are in Christ, ought to perform good works “out of the grace of regeneration.”86 In sharp contrast to the covenant of works, however, the first aspect of the ground of the covenant of grace “or the gospel,” is “our Mediator Jesus Christ crucified….”87 The grace of the gospel covenant was purchased and merited for believers by the blood of Christ. The second aspect of the ground of the covenant of grace (which he called the “first immediate ground”) is “God’s free favor or mercy,” which presupposes “man’s misery.” Unlike the covenant of works, neither nature nor “any good thing in it” can be a basis for the covenant of grace.88 The covenant of grace is not without conditions in its administration. The word “gracious” does not exclude every condition.89 What are excluded are the natural works of the covenant of works.90 Faith (fides) is the “sole condition” that condition is met by grace.91 Indeed, it is not faith itself which God regards but the object of faith, Christ. “For faith embraces the mercy of God in Christ and it makes Christ in us efficacious for righteousness and life.”92 He rejected any hint of moralism by repudiating the notion that Spirit-wrought sanctity, the second benefit of the covenant of grace, is a condition of the covenant of grace, lest the covenant of grace become a covenant of works by introducing cooperation with grace as a condition.93
Amandus Polanus (1561–1610) also taught a clear distinction between the prelapsarian covenant of works and a postlapsarian covenant of grace.94 Like Rollock, he spoke of one covenant with two aspects: the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.95 God initiates the covenant, but there is a mutuality to the covenant. God promises a certain good (eternal life) and there is a stipulation upon Adam.96 As with Rollock, the stipulation of the prelapsarian covenant of works is Adam’s “perfectam legi operum obedientiam,” and the stipulation of the postlapsarian covenant of grace is faith in the mediator, Christ.97 He taught explicitly that God
86 Rollock, Tractatus, 12.
87 Rollock, Tractatus, 16.
88 Rollock, Tractatus, 16.
89 Rollock, Tractatus, 18.
90 Rollock, Tractatus, 18.
91 Rollock, Tractatus, 19.
92 Rollock, Tractatus, 19.
93 Rollock, Tractatus, 21–22. See also Tractatus, 36–39, 244–66.
94 On Polanus see Max Eugene Deal, “The Meaning and Method of Systematic Theology in Amandus Polanus” (PhD Disseration, University of Edinburgh, 1980).
95 Polanus, Syntagma, Lib. 6, cap. 33, col. 321).
96 Polanus, Syntagma, Lib. 6, cap. 33, col. 321.
97 Polanus, Syntagma, Lib. 6, cap. 33, col. 321.Page 13
“repeated this same covenant (of works) with the Israelite people through Moses” and is called “the covenant of Moses, the covenant of law, and commonly the old covenant.”98 The function of the repetition of the covenant of works under Moses was pedagogical, to drive sinners to Christ. The promise of the covenant of grace is also eternal life, but it is offered to sinners “gratis propter Mediatorem unicum Christum.”99 In turn, those graciously redeemed freely obligate themselves to obey the Savior. God initiated this covenant after the fall and administered it in the history of redemption. The covenant of grace is called a “fedus [sic] pacis Ezech. 34.25” and “reconciliatio cum Deo.” It is also called a “testamentum” because of the intervening death of the testator, Christ.100 The same covenant of grace is eternal but was administered in history under Abraham and fulfilled in Christ. Under this heading Polanus treated the pactum salutis as the foundation of the covenant of grace for the elect. In this context, Christ, who has been interceding for all the faithful from the beginning of the world until the end, was said to be the “causa materia” and the “fundamentum” of the covenant of grace. He is our “Sponsor” who “in our place” has satisfied divine justice.101 Even though he addressed the pactum salutis under the covenant of grace, Christ’s vicarious obedience for the elect is clearly a legal obligation undertaken by the Son on behalf of the elect, so that, as in the other cases, Polanus’ account of the covenant of redemption had both legal and gracious elements. Regarding the elect, the covenant of redemption was gracious. Relative to Christ the Mediator, however, it was treated as a covenant of works.
The Compendium Theologiae Christianae (1626) of Johannes Wollebius (1586-1629) represents the covenant theology Dort-era orthodoxy. He did not articulate the pactum salutis explicitly, but taught the same duplex definition of the covenant evident in Rollock and Polanus.102 The covenant of works was broken by the transgression of the law of nature, which he held to be substantially identical to the Decalogue.103His account of redemptive history and the covenant of grace as a gospel covenant follows the pattern observed thus far.104 Wollebius was interested in the question of the administration of the covenant of grace and of the different ways people relate to the covenant of grace. He distinguished a “triplex administrationis,” in the typological period: from Adam to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, and from Moses to Christ.105 The law and the gospel have been revealed in each administration through the history of redemption.106 The “forma” of the covenant of grace consists in mutual obligation. Since God
98 Polanus, Syntagma, Lib. 6, cap. 33, col. 321.
99 Polanus, Syntagma, Lib. 6, cap. 33, col. 322.
100 Polanus, Syntagma, Lib. 6, cap. 33, col. 322.
101 Polanus, Syntagma, Lib. 6, cap. 33, col. 322.
102 Johannes Wollebius, Christianae Theologiae Compendium (Neukirchen: Kreis Moers, 1935), 30.
103 Wollebius, Compendium, 41.
104 Wollebius, Compendium, 77.
105 Wollebius, Compendium, 78.
106 Wollebius, Compendium, 79.Page 14
initiates the covenant, there are naturally disproportional relations.107 The “finis” of the covenant of grace is “gloria Dei et electorum salus,” and because it is administered in the visible church, the covenant can be said to be “offered to all who are called.” Even though it is offered to all, it will only be fruitful among the elect.108 Thus, in every administration, there are two ways of relating to the one covenant of grace, external and internal. Those who make only an external profession of faith, have only an external relation to the covenant of grace.109
William Ames (1576–1633) transmitted English Reformed theology to the Netherlands at Franeker (1622–33) and was a significant influence upon seventeenth-century Reformed theology.110 His chief dogmatic work was Medulla theologiae (1623). He did taught a pre-temporal covenant between the Father and the Son, that the “Father bound his Son” to the office of Mediator “through a special covenant.” He wrote of a “transactio inter Deum et Christum” whereby the surety (sponsor) was given to the people and the people to him before the application of redemption was accomplished in time.111 The pactum salutis became prototype for the historical covenants. Ames found two distinct covenants in history: of works and of grace. The prelapsarian covenant was legal. Its command was “do this and live.” Its condition was obedience, and its promise was eternal life.112 His proof for the covenant of works was the covenant made with national Israel (Deut 26:16–19, Deut 8:18).113 His appeal to the Israelite covenant to demonstrate the covenant of works suggests that, like the earlier writers, he connected the covenant of works with national Israel but he did not elaborate upon the connection in the Medulla. Like his predecessors, Ames appealed to the covenant of grace to explain the unity of salvation under the era types and shadows and Christ.114 The distinction between Moses and Christ is in the “modus administrationis” not in the promise (eternal life) or condition (faith) of the covenant relative to justification or salvation.115 One unique feature to his analysis was his use of the categories of the ordo salutis (redemption, justification, adoption, sanctification,
107 Wollebius, Compendium, 78.
108 Wollebius, Compendium, 78.
109 Wollebius, Compendium, 77. On this distinction see R. Scott Clark, “Baptism and the Benefits of Christ: The Double Mode of Communion,” The Confessional Presbyterian Journal 2 (2006): 3–19. On the various views in Reformed federalism of covenant children, see Vos, “Doctrine of the Covenant,” 262–67.
110 On Voetius see Joel R. Beeke, “Gibertus Voetius: Towrd a Reformed Marriage of Knowledge and Piety,” in Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment, ed. Carl R Trueman, and R. Scott Clark (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1999). On Ames see Keith L. Sprunger, The Learned Doctor Ames: Dutch Backgrounds of American Puritanism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972).
111 William Ames, Medulla Sacrosanctae Theologiae (London, 1629), 118, idem, William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, trans. John Dykstra Eusden (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1983), 149.
112 Ames, Medulla, 58.
113 Ames, Medulla, 58.
114 Ames, Medulla, 205.
115 Ames, Medulla, 206.Page 15
glorification) to distinguish between the administration of the covenant of grace under Moses and under Christ.116
High Reformed OrthodoxyIt is generally agreed that Johannes Cocceius (1609–69) played a major role in the development of Reformed federal theology but there has been little agreement among scholars as what exactly that role was. He saw himself as carrying on the work of Caspar Olevianus.117 As the author of a major covenant theology, Summa Doctrinae de Foedere (1653) and a dogmatic theology, Summa Theologiae ex Scripturis Repetita (1662),118 Cocceius illustrates and provides support for the proposition that what Reformed theologians expressed topically in their dogmatic theologies, they expressed redemptive-historically in their covenant theology. Because Cocceius himself regarded his Summa Doctrinae as definitive for his later work, we shall focus on it in this survey.119
Like most of the Reformed writers of this period, he began with a study of the biblical terms for covenant, berith and diatheke. The former he interpreted to mean the establishment of peace among parties.120 Where the older Reformed writers had treated the various covenantal terms as synonyms, as Brian Lee has shown, Cocceius’ was building upon Franciscus Junius’ argument from the progress of revelation that the old covenant was a foedus but the new covenant is testamentum.121 Where the earlier writers (Zwingli, Bullinger, Beza) were anxious to maintain the substantial unity of the covenant of grace, for Junius it was not the primary concern. Rather he was attempting to account for the progressive of revelation by describing the “progression from promissio to foedus and finally to testamentum.”122 Picking up this interest, Cocceius developed elements long latent in Reformed theology of the progressive revelation of the covenant of grace.123
In general, God’s covenant with humans is “nothing other than the divine declaration about the way of receiving the love of God, and of possessing union and communion with
116 Ames, Medulla, 206.
117 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, 4.
118 The first edition was titled Collationes de Foedere et Testamento Dei (Leiden, 1648). The edition used for this essay is the Summa Doctrinae (Leiden, 1660). See also, idem, Opera Theologica (Amsterdam, 1673–75), Lee, “Biblical Exegesis, Federal Theology,” 243.
119 He wrote the Summa Doctrinae to show the “analogiam et συµφωνίαν doctrinae Christianae” (Summa Doctrinae, 3). See also van Asselt, Johannes Cocceius, 21.
120 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §1. He defined the biblical terms in antithesis to Hugo Grotius and the Socinians. See Lee, “Biblical Exegesis, Federal Theology,” 70–84, idem, “The Covenant Terminology of Johannes Cocceius: The Use of Foedus, Pactum, and Testamentum as a Mature Federal Theologian,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 14 (2003): 11–36.
121 Lee, “Biblical Exegesis, Federal Theology,” 54–55.
122 Lee, “Biblical Exegesis, Federal Theology,” 55.
123 Cocceius consistently taught the substantial unity of the covenant of grace. See e.g., Summa Doctrinae, §322–23.Page 16
him.”124 He recognized that there the “covenant of God” (foedus Dei), is initiated by God and requires a response.125 As a Protestant, however, Cocceius distinguished sharply between works and grace. They are “opposite ways of receiving the love of God.”126 Therefore there are two laws: one of works and the other of faith.127 With the mainstream of Reformed theology, he was concerned that the covenant of grace not become a covenant of works. Thus, the “foedus operum,” in contrast to the covenant of grace, is a way of speaking about “friendship and righteousness with God” (“amicitia cum Deo et iustitia”) based on works (“ex operibus”).128 Like Olevianus he described the Mosaic covenant as a “foedus legale” and appealed to the Mosaic covenant, and the Pauline interpretation of the old covenant to explain the prelapsarian covenant of works.129 The covenant with Adam was recorded on the “tablets of his heart” because he was created righteous.130 Cocceius elaborated on the federal-probationary aspects of the foedus operum. God tested Adam’s obedience with single, and apparently easy, commandment to prove the same or destroy it and add sins to it.131 Like most Reformed writers, he taught an eschatological element to the covenant of works, so that, had Adam obeyed, he would have entered into a consummate state of fellowship with God.132
One of the more fascinating and controversial elements of Cocceius’ view of the covenant of works was his doctrine of its progressive abrogation.133 Though completely committed to the notion of the unity of the covenant of grace, in his doctrine of the fivefold abrogation, he placed the focus upon the progress of revelation and redemption.134 First, because of sin, no one is able to fulfill the covenant of works and thereby enter into friendship with God.135 Second, the covenant of works was abrogated as a condition for sinners because of the covenant of grace by which the goods of the covenant are conferred, post lapsum, on the basis of the Mediator and received through the instrument of faith, through which we received the benefits of the
124 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §5. I am indebted to Casey Carmichael for sharing a draft of his unpublished partial translation of this passage.
125 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §6–7 .
126 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §11.
127 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §11.
128 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §12.
129 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §13, 334–48.
130 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §13.
131 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §19.
132 See van Asselt, Johannes Cocceius, 264–65.
133 It was contested in the seventeenth century Voetius in 1665. see Van Asselt, Johannes Cocceius, 282–84.
134 See van Asselt, Johannes Cocceius, 271–87.
135 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §58–70.Page 17
Testament.136 Third, it was abrogated by the “Testamenti et Foederis Novi.”137 Under this head he taught the traditional Reformed doctrine of the fulfillment of the types and shadows in Christ. The fourth abrogation is by the death of the human body, when the struggle against sin is ended.138 The final abrogation is the resurrection of the body.139 Though argued in a highly creative way, combining categories from the ordo salutis with the historia salutis, the substance of what Cocceius taught in the doctrine of abrogation was not essentially different from what the Reformed had been teaching about the fourfold state of man since the beginning of the Reformation.140
Cocceius also taught the pre-temporal pactum salutis.141 One element that he clarified was the connection between the pactum salutis, the historical covenants, and the federal (two-Adam) structure of redemption. “There is a pactum in divine Testament, upon which certainty rests.142 This pactum lies behind the entrance of the Son into history as the Second Adam.”143 The divine justice being what it is, the requirement of the foedus operum made with the first Adam had to be met and satisfied and a positive righteousness had to be provided for the people to be imputed to believers and, given the personal distinctions within the Trinity, it belonged to the Son, having entered freely into this covenant on behalf of the elect, to fulfill it.144 Thus, both the covenant of works and the covenant of grace are related to the covenant of redemption. The legal, prelapsarian covenant of works is related to the Son’s voluntary obligation to become the Second Adam. From this doctrine also followed his doctrine of Christ’s merits “ex pacto” and “ex condigno” on behalf of believers.145 The gracious covenant is related to the redemption accomplished for the elect by the Son and offered to them in Christ. Covenant theology played a vital part in Francis Turretin’s (1623–87) defense of and exposition of Reformed orthodoxy.146 He taught the three-covenant scheme (pactum salutis,
136 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §71–87.
137 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §275.
138 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §538–608.
139 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §609–50.
140 That this is so emerges even more clearly in the Summa Theologiae.
141 van Asselt, Johannes Cocceius, 227–47, idem, Willem J. Van Asselt, “Expromissio or Fideiussio? A Seventeenth-Century Theological Debate Between Voetians and Cocceians About the Nature of Christ’s Suretyship in Salvation History,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 14 (2003): 37–57.
142 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §88.
143 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §90.
144 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §90–100.
145 Cocceius, Summa Doctrinae, §103. See also ibid, §102–07. There was another party, the so-called “Green Cocceians,” following Henricus Groenewegen (c. 1640–92) who were known for their rhetoric. The so-called “severe Cocceians” were closer to the Dutch Puritans or the Voetians. See van Asselt, Johannes Cocceius, 26–31, 340.
146 See J. Mark Beach, “Christ and the Covenant: Francis Turretin’s Federal Theology as a Defense of the Doctrine of Grace” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Calvin Theological Seminary, 2005).Page 18
foedus operum, foedus gratiae) and defended the covenant of works against the Remonstrants.147 He rejected Cameron’s doctrine of the “threefold covenant” (triplex foedus) wherein the Mosaic covenant became a third type of covenant,148 but he did regard the Mosaic covenant as pedagogical and preparatory to the advent of Christ.149
Parallel to Covenant theology, in the Netherlands, after Cocceius was divided between those who supported him (Cocceians),150 those who opposed him (the Voetians) and mediating theologians such as Herman Witsius (1636–1708).151 The latter, building Cocceius and Voetius and chastened by the criticisms that, by his emphasis on the progress of revelation, Cocceius had marginalized divine institutions such as the Sabbath, taught the received three-covenant theology (pactum salutis, foedus operum, foedus gratiae).152 Acutely aware of the dangers both of antinomianism and of legalism,153 Witsius identified the covenant of works with the law and the covenant of grace with the gospel.154 The difference between the covenants of works and grace is the difference between works and grace.155 Had Adam kept the covenant of works, as Christ did as the substitute, he, under that covenant, would have been owed a debt.156 The covenant of grace assumes the fulfillment of the covenant of works by Christ and thus its benefits are received through faith alone. Witsius’ discussion of the pactum salutis was among the most extensive of the high orthodox period. the developments in Europe, vigorous discussions were occurring over covenant theology in the British isles. John Owen (1616–83), perhaps the most famous British theologian of the period made considerable use of covenantal categories in his theology.157 The
147François Turrettini, Institutio Theologiae Elencticae (Geneva, 1688), 8.3.6, 12.2.13–16.
148 Turrettini, Institutio, 12.12.2, 5.
149 Turrettini, Institutio, 12.12.3.
150 E.g., Franz Burman (1632–79), Abraham Heidanus (1597–1678), Campegius Vitringa (1659–1722).
151 E.g., Petrus van Mastricht, Johannes a Marck, and Wilhelmus a Brakel. See van Asselt, Johannes Cocceius, 340.
152 Herman Witsius, De Oeconomia Foederum Dei Cum Hominibus, Libri Quatuor, Editio tertia (Utrecht, 1694), 1.2.6, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.3., 3.4.2. See also J. Mark Beach, “The Doctrine of the Pactum Salutis in the Covenant Theology of Herman Witsius,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 13 (2002): 101–42.
153 Witisus was keenly aware of theological currents in Britain. See Herman Witsius, Conciliatory, Or Irenical Animadversions on the Controversies Agitated in Britain Under the Unhappy Names of Antinomians and Neonomians, trans. Thomas Bell (Glasgow, 1807).
154 Witsius, Oeconomia, 1.1.15.
155 Witsius, Oeconomia, 1.9.11–12. Note that his polemic regarding the abrogation of the covenant of works was aimed at Arminius, not Cocceius.
156 Witsius, Oeconomia, 1.1.15.
157 Sebastian Rehnmann, Divine Discourse: The Theological Methology of John Owen, Text and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 162–77, idem, The Claims of Truth: John Owen’s Trinitarian Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 49–60, 149–63, 189–98, idem, John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man, Great Theologians (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 67–99, Michael Brown, “The Covenant of Works Revived: John Owen on Republication in the Mosaic Covenant,” The Confessional Presbyterian 4 (2008): 151–61.Page 19
British theologians generally accepted the three covenant scheme (covenant of redemption, covenant of works, covenant of grace) but tended to focus on the two historical covenants. John Ball (1585–1640) began with a detailed and intelligent discussion of the meaning of the biblical terms for covenant and concluded that “covenant” in Scripture sometimes refers to an “absolute promise of God, without any stipulation at all, such as was the covenant God made with Noah” while recognizing that “oftentimes in holy Writ, the name Covenant is so used that it is plainly signified a free promise of God, but the stipulation of duty from a reasonable creature….”158 He conceded that the word covenant is not present in the biblical creation narrative but argued that the substance of the idea is present. He taught that the covenant of works was a covenant with both “promise and stipulation.” The promise was eternal life and the stipulation was obedience.159 God did not covenant with Adam as an equal but as a sovereign.160 It was made “of his free grace and love,” but its terms were “in justice and given in justice for our works.”161 The condition of the covenant of works is “perfect obedience in his own person,”162 by which he meant “exact and rigid exaction of perfect obedience in his own person.”163 Nevertheless, the promised reward exceeded what Adam would have deserved so that “though the reward be of justice, it is also of favour.”164 Concerned to protect Reformed theology against the Roman doctrine of merit, he argued that Adam’s obedience was acceptable because God promised to accept it.165 Unlike the covenant of grace, however, the covenant of works was made with humanity in a state of innocence and thus there was no need for a mediator.166 The faith exercised in the covenant works trusts that God loves one as a creature (per modum naturae).167 The condition of covenant of grace, however, is trusting in the “promise made in Christ.”168 The covenant of grace is “opposite” to the covenant of works “in kind.”169 One cannot be under grace and law at the same time.170 The covenant of works was made with Adam, but the covenant of
158 John Ball, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (London, 1645), 3.
159 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 6.
160 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 11.
161 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 7.
162 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 8.
163 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 10.
164 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 7. He was followed closely here by Thomas Blake, Vindiciae Foederis; or a Treatise of the Covenant of God Entered Entered With Man-Kinde., 2nd Edition (London, 1658), 9.
165 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 9.
166 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 9.
167 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 9, 13.
168 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 8, 12.
169 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 15.
170 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 15.Page 20
grace and mercy to sinners was made with sinners in Christ.171 There is a moral requirement upon those who receive the benefits of the covenant freely given. One might describe these obligations as second order or consequent conditions. They neither function as conditions of entrance into the covenant of grace nor or remaining in it but as more “restipulations” upon those graciously redeemed.172The sole condition of justification and salvation is faith in Christ the mediator. That faith is characterized by repentance and trusting in Christ but one is not justified through repenting and prayer.173
He recognized “some make the Old Testament a Covenant subservient to the Covenant of Grace,”174 a postlapsarian repetition of the covenant of works, a typological, pedagogical covenant, to prepare the Israelites for Christ.175 Ball did not deny these aspects to the old covenant, but was anxious for the reader to understand that the old covenant was also substantially a manifestation of the covenant of grace.176 The covenant of works, once broken, could not be renewed, but the old covenant was renewed, and therefore it was a covenant of grace.177
James Ussher (1581–1656) also focused on the two historical covenants in his exposition of the faith.178 The “two-fold covenant” is God’s “special order of government” by which he relates to us. The two parts of the covenant are that God should be our God and that we should be his people.179 The twofold covenant was also said to be two covenants: of law or works and of
171 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 16–17.
172 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 17. This theme had been well established since Olevianus. See Clark, Caspar Olevian, 198–202.
173 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 18–23. See also Blake, Vindiciae, 100–105, 131–60. The latter made repentance a condition of the covenant of grace but argued “obedience necessarily follows and flows from faith” (ibid, 147). It seems clear that both Ball and Blake were troubled by what they regarded as the antinomianism of Tobias Crisp and others. Anthony Burgess also responded to the so-called antinomians. See Anthony Burgess, Vindiciae Legis Or a Vindication of the Moral Law and the Covenants (London, 1646). The latter made the Sinai covenant a republication of the covenant of grace. For a contemporaneous survey of British opinion in this period see Edmund Calamy, Two Solemne Covenants Made Between God and Man: The Covenant of Workes and the Covenant of Grace (London, 1646), 1–2. On this period see C. Fitsimons Allison, The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel From Hooker to Baxter (New York: Seabury Press, 1966; reprint Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2003).
174 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 93. This is a reference to John Cameron. See Muller, “Divine Covenants.” See also Samuel Bolton, The True Bounds of Christian Freedom (London, 1645), 120–71. Bolton rejected the notion that the Mosaic covenant was partly legal, partly gracious. Rather, he argued, it is a third covenant because it is pedagogical. Portion’s of Cameron’s De Triplici Dei cum Homine Foederis Theses (1642) were translated and appended to Bolton’s work. Turretin (Institutio 12.12.2) however, connected Cameron’s approach to Moises Amyraut’s Theses Theologicae de Tribus Foederibus Divinis.
175 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 94–107. See also Calamy, Two Solemne Covenants.
176 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 93–95.
177 Ball, Covenant of Grace, 107. Cf. E. F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity: Touching Both the Covenant of Works, and the Covenant of Grace (London: 1645), 27.
178 James Ussher, A Body of Divinity Or Summe and Substance of Religion, 2nd Edition (London: 1653).
179 Ussher, A Body of Divinity. 123.Page 21
promise or grace.180 The essence of the law given to Moses at Sinai was given to Adam in the garden.181 The covenant of works was a legal covenant that offered eternal life upon condition of perfect obedience. The covenant of grace is a postlapsarian covenant of promise that he described as the new covenant “because by it were are renewed” in contrast to the old, covenant of works.182 Where Ball was willing to describe the covenant of works as, in some sense both gracious and legal, Ussher distinguished more sharply between the covenant of works as legal and the covenant grace as purely gracious. Where Ball emphasized the similarities of the covenants of works and grace, Ussher emphasized their distinction, identifying the covenant of work with law and the covenant of grace with gospel, of which Christ is the Mediator and from which good works logically follow.183 Ussher taught the pactum salutis implicitly.184
The three-covenant theology of Samuel Rutherford (1600–61) is, like Ussher’s, representative of that which came to expression in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647).185 This is particularly evident in his clarity about works and grace, Christ’s active obedience, the nature of faith, and justification.186 One feature of this work that distinguishes it from some of the others surveyed is his close attention to the relations between the administration of the covenant of grace and election.187
The covenant theology of Patrick Gillespie (1617–75) was perhaps one of the most significant works of this period and is one of the least read.188 In his treatise on the covenant of grace he attempted to use covenant theology as the organizing principle for the Christian faith and particularly for soteriology. Like most of the orthodox writers he distinguished clearly between works and grace, between the “covenant of nature” and the “covenant of grace.”189 The condition of the covenant of works was obedience and the condition of the covenant of grace, in all its administrations, is faith in Christ.190 In the covenant of works, Adam was to exercise a
180 Ussher, A Body of Divinity. 124.
181 Ussher, A Body of Divinity. 124.
182 Ussher, A Body of Divinity. 158.
183 Ussher, A Body of Divinity. 159–160. This was the approach of E. F., Marrow, Hugh Binning, Common Principles of Christian Religion (Glasgow, 1666), 240–45.
184 Ussher, A Body of Divinity. 151, 174, 335–36, 505–07. Ussher connected Christ’s office as surety for the elect to the imputation of Christ’s active and passive obedience to believers.
185 Samuel Rutherford, The Covenant of Life Opened or a Treatise on the Covenant of Grace (Edinburgh: 1655). Rutherford was the leader of the Scottish delegation to the Assembly in 1643.
186 Rutherford, The Covenant of Life, 172–80, 201–17, 226, 246.
187 See Rutherford, The Covenant of Life, 8–9 47–48, 73–142
188 Patrick Gillespie, The Ark of the Covenant Opened Or the Secret of the Lords Covenant Unsealed in a Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (London, 1661), idem, Ark of the Covenant Opened Or a Treatise Upon the Covenant of Redemption (London, 1677). See also Carl Trueman, Carl R. Trueman, John Owen, 72–73.
189 Gillespie, The Lords Covenant Unsealed, 159.
190 Gillespie, The Lords Covenant Unsealed, 160–62, 177–290.Page 22
general faith and to provide perfect, personal obedience. In the covenant of grace, Christ, as the surety, provides the obedience for the believer and is thus the object of faith.191 In distinction from Rutherford, he argued that all who unregenerate, even if elect, are under the covenant of works unless and until they should be “freed from the law as a Covenant of Works” by grace, through faith in Christ.192
He described the mutuality of the covenant of grace not as a “debt of justice” but as a “debt of favor.” God is obligated by his promise to himself and therefore it is utterly reliable because of divine immutability, and thus it is a cause for confidence among believers.193 He surveyed several different sorts of biblical covenants classifying them generally as examples either of a covenant of justice or a covenant of favor.194 The covenant made with Israel at Sinai was both a covenant of grace “which tendered Righteousness and Life to sinners by faith in Christ, though the giving of that Covenant was legal, as to the manner of it, and very much in the form of a Covenant of Works,” for the purpose of “pressing upon them the commands of the Law, and perfect obedience under the pain of the curse of the Covenant of Works” to “convince them of the sinfulness, and the utter impossibility of getting life without Christ….”195
ConclusionsReformed orthodoxy viewed federal theology as a redemptive-historical way of
expressing substantially the same Reformation theology taught in their dogmatic works and confessional symbols and inherited from the first generation Protestants. From this survey we may make three observations:
First, whether writing on covenant theology as a locus of dogmatics, where appeal to biblical texts assumes prior exegetical work, or as a way of organizing redemptive-history, Reformed orthodoxy demonstrated progressively, from the late sixteenth century through the seventeenth century, a progressively sophisticated biblical theology. Most of the covenant theologies began or included at least a brief discussion of the etymology of the biblical words and the roots of the biblical teaching on the covenant, usually endeavoring to situate that teaching in its ancient near eastern context.
Second, the primary texts show that it was this close attention to Scripture that led the various writers to disagree on a few second order questions, e.g., the question of whether the covenant made with Moses was only a republication of the postlapsarian covenant of grace, or whether it was also a pedagogical covenant and a republication of the covenant of works or in some way subordinate to the covenant of grace, whether or how the covenant of works may be said to have been abrogated in the history of redemption and the best way to speak about the relation of children to the covenant of grace.
191 Gillespie, The Lords Covenant Unsealed, 229–30.
192 Gillespie, The Lords Covenant Unsealed, 216–217.
193 Gillespie, The Lords Covenant Unsealed, 50–54.
194 Gillespie, The Lords Covenant Unsealed, 70, 98–152.
195 Gillespie, The Lords Covenant Unsealed, 155.Page 23
Third, these disagreements notwithstanding, there was virtual unanimity on the three covenant superstructure to Reformed theology. Even those writers who did not refer specifically to a pre-temporal, intra-Trinitarian covenant of redemption taught the essence of it by speaking of Christ as the surety (sponsor) of the covenant of grace for the elect. Most frequently, however, the orthodox wrote specifically of a covenant of redemption and one historical covenant with two aspects or two historical covenants: the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. Consistently, even in those writers who were deeply troubled by the reality of antinomianism, the commitment to Reformed understanding of Scripture required them to distinguish clearly between the principles of law and gospel, which they correlated to the covenants of works and grace.
For the mainstream of Reformed orthodoxy, in the two historical covenants, as in the pactum salutis, Christ was central. He was both covenant maker and covenant keeper. Having voluntarily entered into a legal relationship for the sake of the elect, God the Son undertook to enter history to make a temporal and temporary covenant with Adam as the representative of all humanity. After the fall, the Son made a covenant with Adam to fulfill the terms of the covenants of redemption and works and thereby to be his redeemer, the Second Adam, and the Savior of all the elect. In articulating this highly developed federalism, the orthodox writers gave considered that they were doing anything but elaborating upon the fundamental themes of Protestant theology received from the first generation Reformers.Page 24
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