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JUDICIAL WARFARE
Christian Reconstruction and Its Blueprints For Dominion
by Greg Loren Durand
Chapter Five:
Theonomy's Doctrine of Covenantal Nomism
In the words of Thomas Boston, “Such is the natural propensity of man's heart to the way of the law, in opposition to Christ, that, as the tainted vessel turns the taste of the purest liquor put into it, so the natural man turns the very gospel into law, and transforms the covenant of grace into a covenant of works."(1) This confusion of grace and law may be seen in the theonomic system, one key tenet of which is that Christians are supposedly under the same pedagogical covenant as were the Israelites. In his book, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, Greg Bahnsen wrote, "...[L]awlessness and disobedience lead to captivity for the Jews and removal from the promised land. Only when the people of God had learned the lesson of obedience to God's law could they be delivered according to the promise (Deut. 30:1-3)...."(2) This much is true. However, because Bahnsen saw the Mosaic covenant as a mere administration of the Covenant of Grace,(3) rather than a temporary type of the Adamic Covenant of Works, he carried Israel's requirements for possession of the promised land over into the New Covenant era and applied them to the Church:
The New Testament and Covenant continue the same demand for obedience. Entrance to the kingdom is dependent upon attesting obedience (Matt. 7:21), and the kingdom itself is synonymous with righteousness.... Without the obedience of kingdom righteousness Christ cannot be one's Savior (Heb. 5:9).... All men are exhorted to seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness (Matt. 6:33). The chastening of God which comes in the form of affliction or persecution makes one righteous, obedient to the law, and worthy of the kingdom.... The kingdom, righteousness, and law-keeping are inseparable and mutually inclusive. The Messianic kingdom is to be advanced in the earth along with the teaching of obedience to the law of God (Matt. 28:19f). When Christ returns in judgment He will take vengeance upon all those who do not obey the gospel (2 Thess. 1:7f) (emphasis in original).(4)
If “entrance to the kingdom is dependent upon attesting obedience,” and “kingdom righteousness” is that which is wrought in the believer through “obedience to the law of God,” it would seem that the Christian is made “worthy of the kingdom,” not by the imputation of the perfect righteousness of Christ through faith alone, but by an implanted righteousness that is ultimately maintained by his own works. Bahnsen could call this arrangement a “monergistic covenant of grace”(5) only by redefining the term to fit his monocovenantal presuppositions:
The New Testament saint, no less than the Older Testament saints or Adam in paradise, is committed to obey the law of his gracious God. If a man disobeys God’s law, he has broken covenant with God, and his covenant sign loses its value; this is just as true under the New Covenant as under the Older....
Continued blessing for Adam in paradise, Israel in the promised land, and the Christian in the kingdom has been seen to be dependent upon persevering obedience to God's will as expressed in His law. There is complete covenantal unity with reference to the law of God as the standard of moral obligation throughout the diverse ages of human history (emphasis in original).(6)
As already discussed, “continued blessing” for Adam in the Garden and Israel in the Promised Land was part and parcel of the Covenant of Works — in the former, the actual covenant itself; in the latter, a republication or type thereof. Bahnsen's insistence upon “complete covenantal unity" between Adam in the Garden, Israel in Canaan, and the Christian in the Kingdom derived from his understanding of the Covenant of Grace as a renewal of the original Adamic covenant. This necessarily leads to the conclusion that “obeying the Gospel” is not “resting upon Christ alone for salvation,” but obeying the law in order to remain in a covenantal relationship with God: “Sanctification in God’s law makes us children of God and brethren of Christ.... The knowledge of God and salvation depend on keeping His commandments.”(7) Such a doctrine is known as "covenantal nomism," which was described by E.P. Sanders as "the view that one's place in God's plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for transgression."(8) According to this view, the believer enters the covenant by grace and remains there by obedience; sanctification, then, is merely a progression of justification throughout the believer's life.
While Bahnsen attempted to conceal his covenantal nomism with Reformed terminology, Rushdoony was openly critical of the Reformed doctrine of sanctification precisely because it was not based on law-keeping:
Sanctification depends on our law-keeping in mind, word, and deed. The perfection of the incarnate Word was manifested in His law-keeping; can the people of His kingdom pursue their calling to be perfect in any way other than by His law-word? ...If the law is denied, how is man then to be sanctified? ...Protestant theology left man justified but without a way to be sanctified.... To separate the law from the gospel is to separate oneself from the law and the gospel, and from Christ....
The infiltration of Hellenic thought into the Christian community meant, among other things, the introduction of a new doctrine of sanctification. The Biblical doctrine is thoroughly practical: it calls for the progressive submission of man and the world to the law of God. It is a program for conquest and victory. The greatness of medieval culture was built on the bedrock of an obedience to the law, and the same was true of Puritanism. The staying power of the Jew in the face of adversities has been the measure of his loyalty to the law....
The Reformation restated clearly the doctrine of justification, but it failed to clarify the doctrine of sanctification. The confusion is apparent in the Westminster Confession of Faith; chapter XIII, "Of Sanctification," is excellent as far as it goes, but it fails to specify precisely what the way of sanctification is....(9)
According to the theonomic system, sanctification is directly connected with earthly dominion, and even the unbelieving Jew, who has but an outward obedience to the Mosaic law, is somehow given "staying power." Thus, justification, in Rushdoony's understanding, clears the slate of past transgression and returns the believer to the task of sanctifying himself and the world through subjection to the law. We will see in a later chapter how this led to his "gospel of restitution."
The main source of Theonomy’s error here is a misidentification of sanctification with righteousness. The Greek word translated “righteousness” (dikaiosune) is a legal term which denotes “conformity to a standard,” or “agreeableness to a rule of judgment,” particularly in the context of a binding contract or covenant.(10) Not to be confused with “holiness” (hagiosune), which, when applied to men, approximates one’s conduct to the character of God and therefore may either increase or decrease,(11) righteousness is not a progressive term — either one has kept the covenant or one has broken it. In the New Testament, this word generally refers to a substantive conformity to God’s moral law which merits eternal life (Matthew 5:48; Romans 10:3; Galatians 3:21). However, under the Mosaic economy, “righteousness” (tsehdek) generally referred to a qualitative conformity to the Sinaitic covenant, resulting in its temporal blessings (Deuteronomy 6:25; Proverbs 14:34). Such a righteousness could be forfeited by covenantal defection (Ezekiel 18:20-32), but restoration was available through sacrifice (Hebrews 9:22) and covenantal renewal (Ezra 10; Nehemiah 7-9). Thus, David sometimes petitioned God on the basis of his own righteousness (Psalm 7:8, 18:20), even though his life was often plagued with many sins for which he had to be forgiven and restored (Psalm 51). This is also the sense in which Paul described his relationship to the law as a Pharisee in Philippians 3:6, despite his confession to have been the “chief of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). Other instances of this external righteousness may be found in Luke 1:5-6 and Acts 10:22.
However, with the abolition of the sacrificial system, there no longer remained any means of covenantal restoration (Hebrews 10:26), thereby requiring a change of the covenant itself (Hebrews 7:12), which came with the institution of the New Covenant (Hebrews 8:7-12). Theonomists often write as though the death of Christ replaced the sacrificial system,(12) thereby rendering a change of law unnecessary, but this assumption ignores the plain biblical teaching that the sacrifices of Calvary and of the Old Testament were qualitatively different. While providing atonement for transgressions against the temporal, land-bound Mosaic covenant, the animal sacrifices of the Tabernacle and the later Temple could never atone for violations of the transcendent moral law and “make the comers thereunto perfect” before God (Hebrews 10:1) as touching the righteousness required for eternal life. It must be kept in mind, therefore, that whenever Paul wrote of the believer’s righteousness, he did so in the context of perfect conformity to the universal moral law under the Covenant of Works, never in the context of obedience to the localized statutes of the Mosaic covenant. This righteousness, or conformity to the law “at all times and in all places and conditions” and in “all the dispositions, thoughts, and purposes of the heart as well as to all the words and actions of the life,”(13) is demanded by God of all mankind, irrespective of nationality (Acts 17:30), and everlasting damnation is the penalty for failing to produce it (Revelation 20:13). However, since all men have “fallen short” of this conformity (Romans 3:23), such a righteousness must necessarily be understood as being alien to the believer, and never what he possesses in himself other than by imputation through faith: “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them who believe” (Romans 3:21-22).
"The kingdom, righteousness, and law-keeping" are indeed "inseparable and mutually inclusive," but the question is, Whose righteousness and law-keeping are they? Bahnsen shifted the focus away from Christ, to whom alone righteousness and law-keeping are attributed in the New Testament, to the believer himself. Rushdoony did the same thing when he claimed that "the call to sanctification... is a summons to obey the law...." (emphasis in original)(14) Such a shift is fatal to the Gospel, for "[I]f righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Galatians 2:21). According to Rushdoony, "The antinomian believes that faith frees the Christian from the law, so that he is not outside the law but is rather dead to the law. There is no warrant whatsoever in Scripture for antinomianism."(15) While admitting that the phrase "dead to the law" is indeed found in Scripture, he insisted that "it has reference to the believer in relationship to the atoning work of Christ as the believer's representative and substitute" and concluded:
...[T]he believer is dead to the law as an indictment, a legal sentence of death against him, Christ having died for him, but the believer is alive to the law as the righteousness of God. The purpose of Christ's atoning work was to restore man to a position of covenant-keeping instead of covenant-breaking, to enable man to keep the law by freeing man "from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2), "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us" (Rom. 8:4). Man is restored to a position of law-keeping.(16)
Contrary to Rushdoony, the "law of sin and death" from which the believer has been freed is not just the indictment of the law, but the law itself.(17) As a picture of the original Covenant of Works, the Mosaic covenant required perfect obedience (Leviticus 18:5; Nehemiah 9:29; Ezekiel 20:11; Galatians 3:12; James 2:10)(18) — something which no man, not even the regenerate, is able to produce (Romans 3:23). However, because it did not have renewing power, it merely excited the sinful passions of fallen men and therefore brought death (Romans 7:5-11).(19) As John Calvin wrote, “Those who live to the law, therefore, have never felt the power of the law, or properly understood what the law means; for the law, when truly perceived, makes us die to itself, and it is from this source, and not from Christ, that sin proceeds.”(20)
Rushdoony’s misunderstandings cut at the very heart of the biblical doctrine of justification. The Gospel message is not that men may be restored to "a position of covenant-keeping," but rather that those who trust in the righteousness of Christ alone for salvation are viewed by God as covenant-keepers. For them, the broken Adamic covenant has been fulfilled in Christ and they have already become partakers of the glorified life promised in that covenant. In the words of Christ Himself, the Christian has "passed from death unto life" (John 5:11). Theonomy's anemic gospel merely places a man back into the probationary state of Adam in the Garden, but the true Gospel lifts him far above that state and actually seats him with Christ "in heavenly places" (Ephesians 2:6). There are no more legal conditions or requirements for him to fulfill, for he is already complete in Christ.
In his Institutes of Biblical Law, Rushdoony wrote, "Salvation is by the grace of God through faith; sanctification is by the law of God.... Those who are in the covenant are in a covenant of grace which is also a covenant of works. The grace enables them to perform the works which are required of them."(21) He repeated this claim in his Systematic Theology: “The new covenant is... at one and the same time a covenant of grace and law, a covenant of works. Works belong to the covenant, irrevocably and fundamentally.”(22) It is ironic that, while he reacted so negatively to the doctrine of a pre-lapsarian Covenant of Works, Rushdoony was nevertheless willing to thus insert the works principle into the Covenant of Grace. The implication of this unbiblical admixture of grace and law is that we are restored to a covenantal relationship with God (a state of grace) through faith, but kept there by faithful obedience to the law (works). Rather than merely teaching what the Bible teaches — that regeneration enables the Christian to obey God freely and without external compulsion (Luke 1:74-75)(23) — Rushdoony put forth the old Scholastic doctrine of infusio gratiae justificantis, or “grace” defined as an inward “spiritual quality” which empowers the Christian to perform the works required to maintain right standing with God.(24) Such was a subtle form of semi-Pelagianism.(25)
Bahnsen taught much the same thing. In Theonomy in Christian Ethics, he wrote, “Whereas a ‘faith’ which is not accompanied by the works of the law is useless and cannot save a person, faith which results in the works of the law is attested, perfected, and powerful to justify (James 2:14-26).”(26) His thought had progressed several years later to abandon entirely this implied distinction between faith and the “works of the law” and to define faith as obedience, or “different sides of the same coin.”(27) This identification of faith with obedience is even more evident in the following excerpt from a recorded lecture:
Let me very briefly point out, some people will say James can't mean the word justify in a forensic sense, because then he would contradict Paul. Paul says we are justified by faith, not works. James says we are justified by works. So if they both mean "justify" in the forensic sense, there is a contradiction. Well, I don't think so, because in Galatians 5:6 Paul teaches exactly what James does. Paul says we are justified by faith working by love. We are justified by working, active, living faith. I think that's what James is teaching. They mean exactly the same thing. But... this has been a bone of controversy in my denomination even, because a professor at Westminster Seminary insisted James means this in the forensic sense.
Now… people who don't like that say, It is to be taken in the demonstrative sense. The problem is, the demonstrative sense of the word justify means "to show someone to be righteous," and that doesn't relieve the contradiction between James and Paul, because Paul in Romans 4 looks at Abraham as an example of how God justifies the ungodly. James is saying, Look at how God justifies someone demonstrated as godly. The contradiction is not relieved. And so what you really get — and this is crucial, this is a crucial point — modern interpreters who don't like what I am suggesting and what Professor [Norman] Shepherd is suggesting end up saying that to justify in James 2 really means "to demonstrate justification," not to "demonstrate righteousness." That is, they make the word to justify mean "to justify the fact that I'm justified." And the word never means that....
I'm suggesting that the reason Paul and James are not contrary to one another is because the only kind of faith that will justify us is working faith, and the only kind of justification ever presented in the Bible after the Fall is a justification by working faith, a faith that receives its merit from God and proceeds to work as a regenerated, new person.(28)
First of all, Bahnsen’s association of “works of the law” with saving faith was based on the monocovenantal presupposition that the law and the Gospel are “one and the same.”(29) However, according to the traditional Reformed view, “works of the law” are those rendered to the law as a covenant of works.(30) As such, “works of the law” do not accompany, but are opposed to, “the hearing of faith” (Galatians 3:2). Paul clearly rejected the notion that such works are beneficial to the Christian’s spiritual well-being, but that they instead indicate an attempt to achieve righteousness by the flesh (Galatians 3:3). To be “of the works of the law” is to be “under the curse” of the law, for the law requires perfect obedience (Galatians 3:10). Thus, “no man is justified by the law in the sight of God” for “the law is not of faith (Galatians 3:11-12).
Secondly, Bahnsen was incorrect in his interpretation of Galatians 5:6, which is better translated “faith exerting, or expressing, itself in love.”(31) Again, no "works of the law" are in view here, but rather the demonstration of true love in the heart toward other believers. That such was Paul’s intent is evident when the verse is read in the context of the remainder of the chapter. Secondly, and more importantly, by injecting works into the definition of saving faith and then ascribing merit to such faith, Bahnsen set forth a justification which was based, at least in part, on works. However, the believer is not justified by his faith at all, but by the One in whom his faith is placed; faith is the means through which justification comes to the believer, but it is not the grounds thereof: “Faith connects us with the righteousness [of Christ], and is therefore totally distinct from it. To confound the one with the other is to subvert the whole gospel of the grace of God.... Faith does not justify as a work, or as a moral act, or a piece of goodness, nor as a gift of the Spirit, but simply because it is the bond between us and the substitute....”(32) The correct theological formulation is therefore not “justification by faith alone,” but “justification by grace through faith alone.”
Furthermore, the faith through which justification comes is not a "working faith," but a resting faith which surrenders all and throws oneself on the mercies of God in Christ. In the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, "Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel."(33) Horatius Bonar explained further: “The strength or kind of faith required is nowhere stated.... It is simply in believing — feeble as our faith may be — that we are invested with this righteousness. For faith is no work, nor merit, nor effort; but the cessation from all these, and the acceptance in place of them of what another has done — done completely, and for ever. The simplest, feeblest faith suffices....”(34) Such a faith is “the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8) and full justification occurs the instant it is exercised. The good works that necessarily follow this saving faith flow from a regenerate heart into which the principle of obedience has been planted, but they are merely the evidence of true conversion and have nothing to do with justification itself. Contrary to Bahnsen, such is indeed the demonstrative sense in which James wrote of “justifying works” in the second chapter of his epistle:
So the apostle James declareth faith that is alone to be dead, and biddeth us show our faith by our works; which is to be understood, not as if works were the conditions of attaining justification, but sure evidences of justification attained by faith, and very necessary (James ii. 14-26). The gospel is no covenant of works requiring another righteousness for justification by doing for life. Works justify us from such accusations of men as will deny us to have justification by faith, or that we have a true and lively faith, or are good trees (Matt. xii. 33-37); not as being our righteousness themselves, or conditions of our having Christ’s righeousness, or qualifying us for it(35)
Rushdoony's suggestion that the "covenant of grace... is also a covenant of works" simply cannot be reconciled with Scripture, for the Covenant of Grace was a covenant of works only for Christ, not for the believer to whom Christ's perfect obedience to the law is already imputed. Because of its failure to maintain the proper distinction between faith and works, the theonomic doctrine of sanctification could be more accurately described as "progressive justification," in which the believer is accounted increasingly righteous in accordance with his obedience to the law.(36) In the end, "entrance into the kingdom is dependent upon attesting obedience." Thus, "obedience to the law becomes something other than the fruit of faith. Obedience becomes a constitutive element of justification."(37) Though the Theonomists would vigorously deny the charge, such a doctrine evinces the legalistic principle inherent in their system.
History has shown that the adoption of this principle is “the way that backsliding churches in all ages have gone,” for it is “that mystery of iniquity” which ultimately culminated in the apostasy of the papal system.(38) Not only is the confounding of justification (righteousness, or obedience for life) with sanctification (holiness, or obedience from life) “the grand distinguishing feature of Romanism,”(39) it is also the foundation of every other pseudo-Christian sect which has arisen over the years to blind the minds of unbelievers to the simplicity of the Gospel message.(40) It is not surprisingly, therefore, that this was the very point on which the Judaizers of the First Century erred:
When Paul speaks of a man being justified he means, not that he has been made righteous, but that he has been accepted as righteous. And in two important respects his doctrine of justification differs from that of the Judaizers with whom he is in opposition. In the first place he insists that man can never win acceptance by the due performance of the divine requirements — the transcendent holiness of God and the depravity and servitude of man combine to make that way of acceptance impossible. Man cannot be justified by his own works but simply by faith in God. In the second place acceptance need not be postponed till that final day when we stand before Christ for judgment: man may be justified here and now, so soon as he turns to God in faith and flings himself on God's mercy.... As conceived by the Judaizers, however, justification came not at the beginning, but at the end of the process; it came not before the gift of the Spirit, but at the day of judgment; and the special significance of the gift of the Spirit was that it enabled the recipients so to live that they might in the end be justified. It was a noble ideal; but in Paul's eyes it was not Christian, for the simple reason that it reverted to the legalist conception of a man being judged and justified by works (emphasis in original).(41)
However, the true Gospel, for which Paul so vehemently contended in his epistle to the Galatians, declares that, not only are we justified by faith in Christ alone, we are also sanctified by faith in Christ alone.(42) In the former, faith is passive as a “receptive organ;” in the latter, it is active as an “operative power,”(43) while both aspects of salvation are firmly grounded in the imputed righteousness of Christ. Because both Rushdoony and Bahnsen expressly denied that the Mosaic covenant was a republication of the Covenant of Works,(44) it was inconsistent for them to attempt to fit the imputation of Christ’s active obedience to the law into their system.(45) They conceded that Christ’s atonement has indeed satisfied for the penalty of past sins, but, drawing their teaching on “covenantal unity” out to its logical conclusion, there can be no positive declaration of righteousness for the Christian immediately upon conversion and apart from sanctification. Punishment has been negated, but conditions still must be met in order for the promise to take effect. The believer is merely restored to the position of Adam before he sinned and therefore has the law set before him with all its requirements, together with blessings for obedience and cursings for disobedience.(46)
This perversion of the Gospel is directly related to the denial of the Covenant of Works. If there was no covenant made with Adam in which he would have been rewarded for his obedience with eternal life — a condition which transcended his natural created state — then he was forever in a probationary state, never secure because ever liable to fall. Applying this concept to the Christian’s own status, if the believer has merely been restored to Adam’s condition, then he, too, is never secure in his salvation. Thus, the denial of the Covenant of Works undermines the Reformed doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. However, if the doctrine of the Covenant of Works is affirmed, along with a firm belief in Christ’s active obedience to the law as the fulfillment of that covenant in behalf of the believer, then insecurity regarding one’s salvation dissipates. The works required by the law have already been done by Christ, and therefore our own works have nothing at all to do with our standing before God. They flow from our salvation, but never do they contribute to it: “To pretend to sanctification, and then to rely on it for justification, is to derive the fountain from the stream, the cause from the effect, and so to invert the order of the blessings of salvation.”(47)
The Gospel is a covenant and therefore a law to be obeyed according to God’s stipulations (Acts 17:30; 2 Thessalonians 1:8). However, the question, “What must I do to be saved?” has only one answer: “Believe on the Lord Jesus” (Acts 16:30-31). This simple trust in the finished work of Christ is alone the “obedience of faith” spoken of by Paul in Romans 1:5 and 16:26. The attempt to add any work whatsoever to what Christ has already done, whether it be Rushdoony’s “sanctification by the law” or Bahnsen’s more craftily-disguised “attesting obedience,” will render one a debtor to the whole law and therefore subject to its curse (Galatians 3:10, 5:3). “Keeping the covenant,” though an imperative taken for granted in theonomic literature,(48) is therefore entirely foreign to the New Covenant, for unlike the Old Covenant, it cannot be broken (Jeremiah 31:31-34): "Whom God accepts in Christ, he will continue to do so for ever; whom he quickens to walk with him, they shall do it to the end. And these three things, acceptance with God, holiness from God, and a defense upon them both unto the end, all free and in Christ, are that threefold cord of the covenant of grace which cannot be broken" (emphasis in original).(49) In fact, because the Holy Spirit sovereignly regenerates (John 3:8), thereby producing saving faith in the human heart, there is a very real sense in which the New Covenant “consists of mere promises, and, as it relates to elect persons, has the nature of a testament, or last will, rather than of a covenant strictly speaking, and depends on no condition....”(50) This makes sense in light of the fact that the Covenant of Grace is ultimately between the first and second Persons of the Godhead, with the elect being merely the beneficiaries of the reward earned by the “second Adam.”
While the Bible does speak of the necessity of perseverance (Matthew 10:22), it is the perseverance in faith that is in view. In other words, it is necessary to maintain the imputed righteousness of Christ as the sole ground of our acceptance before God; once our own obedience enters into the equation, we are "fallen from grace" and are cut off from Christ (Galatians 5:4). The earnest of the indwelling Spirit guarantees that the elect will persevere in this faith (Ephesians 1:13-14), whereas the non-elect professor will eventually fall into a system of works-righteousness, or will apostatize altogether (Hebrews 6:4-6).
The following words of Walter Marshall are a fitting conclusion to this chapter:
...[T]he practice of true holiness cannot possibly be attained unto, by seeking to be saved by the works of the law; because... this doctrine of salvation by sincere obedience is according to the terms of the law, and not of the gospel. And hereby those also may see their error, that ascribe justification only to the gospel, and sanctification to the law....
The end which God aimed at in giving the law to Moses, was not that any should ever attain to holiness or salvation by the condition of perfect or sincere obedience to it.... There was another covenant made before that time with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — a covenant of grace, promising all blessings freely through Christ, the promised Seed, by which only they were to be saved. And the covenant of the law was added, that they might see their sinfulness and subjection to death and wrath, and the impossibility of attaining to life or holiness by their works, and be forced to trust on the free promise only for all their salvation.... None of the Israelites under the Old Testament were ever saved by the Sinai covenant; neither did any of them ever attain to holiness by the terms of it.... Of itself it was only a killing letter, the ministration of death and condemnation; and therefore it is now abolished (2 Cor. iii. 6,8,9,11). We have cause to praise God, for delivering His Church by the blood of Christ from this yoke of bondage; and we have cause to abhor the device of those that would lay upon us a more grievous and terrible yoke, by turning our very new covenant into a covenant of sincere works, and leaving us no such better covenant, as the Israelites had under their yoke, to relieve us in our extremity.(51)
Endnotes
1. Thomas Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Presbyterian Board of Publications, 1860), page 70.
2. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page 200.
3. Bahnsen, ibid., Chapter Eight.
4. Bahnsen, ibid., pages 202-203.
5. Bahnsen, ibid., page 185.
6. Bahnsen, ibid., pages 188, 203.
7. Bahnsen, ibid., pages 176, 179.
8. E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Norristown, Pennsylvania: Fortress Press, 1977), page 75.
9. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, pages 307-308, 549-550.
10. Hopkins, Doctrine of the Two Covenants, pages 17, 18; Marshall, Gospel-Mystery of Sanctification, page 370; Berkhof, Systematic Theology, page 75.
11. W.E. Vine, Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (McLean, Virginia: MacDonald Publishing Company, n.d.),pages 565-566; Witsius, Economy of the Covenants, Book III, Chapter XII:10.
12. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page 207.
13. Colquhoun, The Law and the Gospel, page 76.
14. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, page 555.
15. Rushdoony, ibid., page 3.
16. Rushdoony, ibid.
17. Colquhoun, The Law and the Gospel, page 208.
18. Boston, "A View of the Covenant of Works," page 259.
19. It is the view of this author that Paul’s autobiographical comments in this chapter of his epistle referred either to his pre-conversion Pharisaical commitment to law-keeping, or to a personification of Israel under the Sinaitic covenant, but not to his struggles as a Christian (see Dougals J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1996], pages 447ff). In verses 5-6, he wrote: “For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.” Thus, Paul identified being “in the flesh” (unregenerate) with being “under the law.” To this hopeless condition he contrasted being “delivered from the law... to serve in newness of spirit....” He then repeated the very same argument, although switching from the third person pronoun (“we”) in the past tense (“were”), to the first person (“I”) in the historic present (“am”): “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal [“in the flesh”], sold under sin” [“under the law”]. He then proceeded to relate how he loved the law in his mind, but found himself constantly foiled in his desire to keep it by the sinful inclinations of his own flesh (verses 15-23), finally crying out for deliverance from “the body of this death” (verse 24) and finding freedom “from the law of sin and death” in Jesus Christ (8:2). Throughout the next chapter, Paul contrasted the bondage of those who are under the law and its impossible demands — even extending such bondage to the creation itself in verse 21 — with the freedom of those who are “in the Spirit.” Clearly, then, Paul's entire argument from chapter five through chapter eight is a protracted theological dissertation on the two covenants — the Covenant of Works, which demands a perfect righteousness that cannot be provided by fallen man, and the Covenant of Grace, through which believers receive the perfect righteousness of Christ through faith.
20. Calvin, Commentaries on Galatians and Ephesians, page 73.
21. Rushdoony, ibid., page 714.
22. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, Volume Two, page 884.
23. Colquhoun, The Law and the Gospel, pages 281-282.
24. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1922), First Part of the Second Part, Question 110.
25. According to Charles Hodge:
The Remonstrant system does not differ essentially from the Pelagian, so far as the parties, the promise and the condition of the covenant are concerned. The Remonstrants also make God and man the parties, life the promise, and obedience the condition. But they regard fallen men as in a state of sin by nature, as needing supernatural grace which is furnished to all, and the obedience required is the obedience of faith, or fides obsequiosa — faith as including and securing evangelical obedience. Salvation under the gospel is as truly by works as under the law; but the obedience required is not the perfect righteousness demanded of Adam, but such as fallen man, by the aid of the Spirit, is now able to perform (Systematic Theology [New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872], Volume II, pages 355-356).
26. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page 240.
27. This progression in Bahnsen’s thought was in part due to the influence of Daniel P. Fuller’s book, Gospel and Law: Contrast or Continuum? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1980), in which the latter interpreted the “obedience of faith” discussed by Paul in Romans 1:5 and 16:26 as “the works one must do in order to be saved, or more fully blessed” (page 113). According to Fuller, “legalism” is believing that one has within himself the resources that God needs or that “he is able to render needful service to God and his fellow man” (page 113) without the assistance of grace. Instead of “resting in what we are or have,” true faith must “do certain concrete things, so in the course of trusting God and in order to remain in his kindness, we must do all the works of love and obey the commandments of the Bible” (pages 113, 114). While he sometimes spoke of “an inseparable connection between faith and resulting works,” (page 113), at other places he described faith and obedience as the same thing: “[O]ne learns to live like Jesus and receive a continuous stream of blessings from [God] simply by faith, that is, by an obedience which keeps him in the place where he can always benefit from the Workman’s skill” (page 115). Consequently, he concluded that “the enjoyment of grace [is] dependent on faith and good works” (page 63). Misusing the Bible’s description of God as the “Great Physician,” Fuller exhorted his readers to avoid legalism by “acknowledg[ing] how truly sick we are and look[ing] away from ourselves and, with complete confidence in the Doctor’s expertise and desire to heal us, follow[ing] his instructions (the obedience of faith!) in order to get well” (page 118; emphasis in original). Thus, “grace is conditional” (page 108) — or as Rushdoony wrote, “[The] covenant of grace... is also a covenant of works.”
As noted above by Hodge, this is precisely the same covenantal nomism taught by the sixteenth-century Remonstrants, and it is also undeniably that of the Theonomists. Bahnsen noted his indebtedness to Fuller’s book on pages 26-27 of No Other Standard (footnote #16) and even employed some of the same language such as “personal resources... without the provisions of grace” in attempting to avoid the charge of legalism (ibid., page 81). The only difference between Fuller and Bahnsen is that Fuller readily acknowledged that the law-gospel, faith-works distinction was that of historic Covenant theology and openly repudiated it as such, whereas Bahnsen claimed to still be teaching Covenant theology, while in substance denying it.
28. Greg L. Bahnsen, Calvin’s Institutes (1986), Session 34, audio tape lecture #GB449b. Norman Shepherd, who was Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, was censured and finally dismissed in 1981 for teaching “justification by faith plus works.” He later revised his terminology to “justification by obedient faith,” reflecting Daniel Fuller’s understanding of the “obedience of faith.” Shepherd is now a major contributor to the Federal Vision movement.
In his book, The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation and Evangelism [Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 2000), Shepherd rejected the traditional understanding that Paul and James were using the term “justification” in two different senses as an assertion “of dubious validity” (page 62). Despite the attempt of some Theonomists, such as John Otis (Danger in the Camp: An Analysis and Refutation of the Federal Vision Heresy [McLeansville, North Carolina: Triumphant Publications, 2005], pages 431ff), to distance Bahnsen from Shepherd, the former clearly identified his view on justification with that of the latter: “[M]odern interpreters don’t like what I am suggesting and what Professor Shepherd is suggesting....” Furthermore, according to Roger Wagner, who studied with Bahnsen under Shepherd at WTS and later served with him as associate pastor of an Orthodox Presbyterian congregation in Chula Vista, California, “[Bahnsen] was always very favorable to Shepherd’s concerns and formulations,” and he believed that “the covenant theology formulated by Shepherd... is not only biblical, but also our strongest bastion against the growing ‘Lutheranism’ and antinomianism in Reformed circles” (letter cited in Randy Booth, “Caution and Respect in Controversy,” online at www.cmfnow.com/AAPC/controversy.html). David Bahnsen has also testified that his father was a supporter of not only Shepherd, but Fuller as well (“Greg Bahnsen and Norm Shepherd — The Final Word,” online at www.davidbahnsen.com).
Support of Shepherd within theonomic circles has not been unique to Bahnsen, however. Joseph Braswell’s essay entitled “Lord of Life: The Confession of Lordship and Saving Faith,” in which Shepherd’s “covenantal perspective” of a “future judgment according to works” was defended, later appeared in the Journal of Christian Reconstruction (Vol. XIII, No. 1, 1990-1991, pages 90-91). Gary North dedicated his book, Westminster’s Confession: The Abandonment of Van Til’s Legacy (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991) to Shepherd, calling him “the most accomplished instructor I had at Westminster Seminary,” and “a loyal defender of Westminster’s original confession.” The theological affinity of Shepherdism and Theonomy/Reconstructionism cannot be successfully denied.
29. Fuller, Gospel and Law, page 103.
30. Calvin, Commentaries on Galatians and Ephesians, page 91; Boston, “A View of the Covenant of Works,” page 251.
31. The Greek word usually translated as “working,” is energoumene, from which we derive the English word “energize.” Thus, faith is “the energizer of love” (Vine, Expository Dictionary, page 1255).
32. Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness (London: James Nisbet and Company, 1873), page 108. See also Hopkins, Doctrine of the Two Covenants, page 131.
33. Shorter Catechism, Question 86.
34. Bonar, Everlasting Righteousness, page 73-74.
35. Marshall, Gospel-Mystery of Sanctification, pages 391-392.
36. While the original Theonomists did not have the temerity to use such language, their theological descendants within the Federal Vision movement have been much less reluctant in this regard. Rich Lusk wrote, “Final justification, however, is according to works. This pole of justification takes into account the entirety of our lives — the obedience we’ve performed, the sins we’ve committed, the confession and repentance we’ve done” (“Future Justification to the Doers of the Law,” online at www.hornes.org/theologia).
The Oxford Tractarians in the mid-Nineteenth Century taught precisely the same doctrine. For example, John Henry Newman wrote:
Man did not become guilty except by becoming sinful; he does not become innocent except by becoming holy. God cannot, from His very nature, look with pleasure and favour upon an unholy creature, or justify or count righteous one who is not righteous. Cleanness of heart and spirit, obedience by word and deed, this alone in us can be acceptable to God.... The one thing we need is the ability to please God, or to be righteous; and it is God’s gift. As His gift... it was promised under the Law; and as His gift, it is possessed by the regenerate under the Gospel.
Til the Gospel came with its manifold gifts of grace there was a contrariety and enmity between the Divine Law and the heart of man.... In consequence we were unable to please God by what we did, that is, we were unrighteous; for by righteousness is meant obedience such as to be acceptable. We needed then a justification, or making righteous.... Now... the remedy lies... not in lowering the Law, much less in abolishing it, but in bringing up our hearts to it; in preserving, in raising its standard, and in refashioning them, and so (as it were) attuning them to its high harmonies. As regards the past indeed, since it cannot literally be undone, a dispensation or pardon is all that can be given us; but for the present and future... this is what we have to pray for, — not to have the Holy Law taken away, not to be merely accounted to do what we do not do, not a nominal change, a nominal righteousness, an external blessing, but one penetrating inwards into our heart and spirit...; not a change merely in God’s dealings towards us... but... the possession of... His substantial grace to touch and heal the root of the evil, the fountain of our misery, our bitter heart and its inbred corruption. As we can conceive God blessing nothing but what is holy, so all our notions of blessing centre in holiness as a necessary foundation. Holiness is the thing, the internal state, because of which blessing comes. He may bless, He may curse, according to His mercy or our deserts; but if He blesses, surely it is by making holy; if He counts righteous, it is by making righteous; if He justifies, it is by renewing; if He reconciles us to Himself, it is not by annihilating the Law, but by creating in us new wills and new powers for the observance of it (Lectures on Justification [London: J.G.F. Rivington, 1838], pages 32-34).
According to Newman, there is an initial justification which consists of a free “dispensation or pardon” of past sins, but because God “cannot justify or count righteous one who is not righteous,” he insisted that “cleanness of heart and spirit” and “obedience by word and deed” were also required to make us “acceptable to God.” This “sanctification” comes, “not by annihilating the Law, but by creating in us new wills and new powers for the observance of it.” It is impossible to discover any substantial difference between this teaching and that of Rushdoony when he described an imparted grace which enables believers “to perform the works which are required of them.”
When an outcry was raised against them within the Church of England, the Tractarians claimed they had been falsely accused of teaching salvation by works. They, like the Theonomists and Federal Visionists of today, pointed to their doctrine of “free pardon” as proof that they had not departed from the Protestant view of justification by grace through faith and succeeded in gathering a large following before their movement eventually died out. Such is a testimony to the deceptive power of redefinition.
37. Joel R. Beeke, "Publisher's Introduction," in Colquhoun, The Law and the Gospel, page xxiii.
38. Boston, "A View of the Covenant of Works," page 270.
39. Charles Pettit McIlvaine, Righteousness By Faith: The Nature and Means of Our Justification Before God (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Protestant Episcopal Book Society, 1864), page 89. See also Council of Trent, Sixth Session, Decree on Justification, January 1547.
40. Mormonism: “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 25:23). “Salvation is free, but it must also be purchased; and the price is obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel” (Bruce R. McConkie, Doctrinal New Testament Commentary [Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 2002], Volume III, page 462). Jehovah’s Witnesses: “[Belief] involves taking in accurate knowledge of God's purposes and his way of salvation. Then faith has to be exercised in Jesus Christ as the Chief Agent of salvation. This places the Christian in a saved condition, but he must now persevere in doing God's will and continue to adhere to all of God's requirements for the rest of his life. Only then will he be saved to eternal life” (Watchtower, 15 December 1989, page 30). Arminianism: “Whenever [the Christian] sins, he must, for the time being, cease to be holy. This is self-evident. Whenever he sins, he must be condemned; he must incur the penalty of the law of God.... The Christian, therefore, is justified no longer than he obeys, and must be condemned when he disobeys; or Antinomianism is true.... Full present obedience is a condition of justification” (Charles Finney, Systematic Theology [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany Fellowship, 1976], pages 46, 57).
41. George S. Duncan, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1934), pages xliii-xliv.
42. Sinclair B. Ferguson, “The Reformed View,” in Donald L. Alexander (editor), Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1988), page 51.
43. Anthony A. Hoekema, “The Reformed Perspective,” in Stanley N. Gundry (editor), Five Views on Sanctification (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1987), page 65.
44. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page 187; Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, Volume One, page 376.
45. Wilhelmus A'Brakel was correct in noting that "whoever errs here or denies the existence of the covenant of works, will not understand the covenant of grace, and will readily err concerning the mediatorship of the Lord Jesus. Such a person will very readily deny that Christ by His active obedience has merited a right to eternal life for the elect" (The Christian's Reasonable Service [Morgan, Pennsylvania: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1992], Volume One, page 355). While Bahnsen attempted to retain this crucial doctrine of Reformed theology (Theonomy in Christian Ethics, Chapter Six), the next generation of Theonomists saw the implications of rejecting a Sinaitic covenant of works and have therefore jettisoned the doctrine of imputation altogether. For example, Rich Lusk sees the active obedience of Christ merely as the “precondition of his saving work in his death and resurrection.” This obedience “is not saving in itself,” nor did it merit anything that is legally transferred to the believer, for, according to Lusk, “God’s righteousness is his own righteousness, not something imputed....” (“Response to ‘Biblical Plan of Salvation,’” in E. Calvin Beisner (editor), The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros and Cons [Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Knox Theological Seminary, 2004], pages 140, 142). In the Federal Vision, “eschatalogical life” is achieved through “union with Christ” initiated in baptism and maintained by covenantal faithfulness. Justification “requires no transfer or imputation of anything,” and is seen as a present reality because of the certainty of the future resurrection and glorification of those who are still found “in Christ” on the last day.
46. Reformed theologians, such as Ezekiel Hopkins, have usually described this in terms of “righteousness of obedience” and “righeousness of satisfaction,” or “positive” and “negative righteousness”:
From hence we may... distinguish righteousness, into a righteousness of obedience, and a righteousness of satisfaction: the former ariseth from performing the precept of the law; the latter, from undergoing the penalty. Between these two righteousnesses this remarkable difference may be observed, that the promise of life being annexed to the fulfilling of the precept, the righteousness of obedience gives a full right and title unto the life promised: but no such right results from the righteousness of satisfaction; for it is not said in the law, “Suffer this, and live,” since the suffering itself was death, but “Do this, and live.” So that, by mere satisfaction, a man is not accounted the fulfiller of the law; nor yet farther, to be dealt withal, as a transgressor of it. Hence, then, the one may be called a positive righteousness, because it ariseth from actual and positive conformity of our obedience to the rules of the law: the other, only negative righteousness, because satisfaction is equivalent to innocency, and reduceth the person to a guiltless condition; which I here call a negative righteousness....
...[T]here are two ends, for which we stand in need of a righteousness: the one is, a freeing of us from the penalty threatened; the other is, an entitling of us to the reward promised. Now, had we no other but the righteousness of Christ’s satisfaction made over unto us, this indeed would perfectly free us from our liableness to punishment; for, if our Surety hath undergone for us, we ourselves would not be liable: but still we should need a righteousness to entitle us to the reward; and that must necessarily be a righteousness of perfect obedience (Doctrine of the Two Covenants, pages 20-21, 37-38).
When Christ announced that He had come to give “life... more abundantly,” or “life to the full” (John 10:10), to the elect, it is obvious that a mere “negative righteousness” was not what He had in mind, but rather the gift of a “positive righteousness” with its reward of glorification. However, since this “positive righeousness” comes only with perfect and perpetual conformity to the law as a covenant of works, it must of necessity be imputed to the believer by faith in Christ’s obedience alone and not in any way result from his own obedience which is never perfect.
47. Colquhoun, The Law and the Gospel, page 309.
48. For example, the writings of Gary North are replete with the assertion that Christians who “keep the covenant” will be blessed and those who do not will be cursed. However, these blessings and curses are usually only associated with the temporal sanctions of Deuteronomy 28. Some Theonomists, such as Daniel F.N. Ritchie, are more brazen in connecting “covenant-keeping” to salvation itself: “People who do not keep the covenant, and strive to obey the law, will be damned” (statement posted on the Confessional Puritan Board on 12 February 2010. Ritchie subsequently removed this incriminating statement from his site, but the cached page and a screenshot are still online).
49. Owen, Exposition of Hebrews, Volume XI, page 179.
50. Witsius, Economy of the Covenants, Book IV, Chapter IV:56; See also Witsius, ibid., Book III, Chapter I:8-23.
51. Marshall, Gospel-Mystery of Sanctification, pages 121, 135-136.
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