JUDICIAL WARFARE
Christian Reconstruction and Its Blueprints For Dominion
by Greg Loren Durand

Chapter Four:
Theonomy and the Covenant of Works

       The great Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, remarked a few years before his death, "The doctrine of the covenant lies at the root of all true theology. It has been said that he who well understands the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, is a master of divinity. I am persuaded that most of the mistakes which men make concerning the doctrines of Scripture, are based upon fundamental errors with regard to the covenant of law and of grace."⁽¹⁾ It is important to keep this in mind, for the backbone of Theonomy is a subtle, and sometimes outright, denial of the Reformed doctrine of the Covenant of Works. According to R.J. Rushdoony:

       The Westminster Confession, one of the great documents of the Christian faith, has at one point been rightly criticized over the years. Its concept of a covenant of works is not only wrong but shows a misunderstanding of the nature of the covenant....
       The covenant is always and only instituted by God's grace. It always is a covenant of law, because covenants are a form of law, and therefore it always requires works. This, however, does not make it a covenant of works.⁽²⁾

       Rushdoony’s criticism of the doctrine of the Covenant of Works stemmed from his belief that Adam’s creaturely relationship to God was intrinsically covenantal, thereby rendering any additional covenant unnecessary.⁽³⁾ Historic Covenant theology, on the other hand, teaches that God's promise of glorification on the condition of perfect obedience transcended Adam's natural constitution and therefore required an additional covenantal arrangement, or, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, a “special act of providence.”⁽⁴⁾ While it is true that, as a creature, Adam was already bound to submit to God as Creator according to the dictates of the natural law within him,⁽⁵⁾ such obedience could never have merited anything but a continued residence in the Garden, subject always to the threat of expulsion for disobedience. What Adam needed was "eschatalogical life" from which declension was no longer possible, and such a state was set before him via special revelation in the Covenant of Works: “The law of creation requires man to perform perfect obedience, and says, ‘Do.” But the law as a covenant of works requires him to ‘do and live’ — to do, as the condition of life; to do, in order to acquire by his obedience a title to life eternal.”⁽⁶⁾
       This concept of a Covenant of Works was also conspicuously absent in the writings of Greg Bahnsen, who claimed that the “pre-redemptive covenant is not merely a matter of law,”⁽⁷⁾ but instead was one of grace containing “the element of law”⁽⁸⁾ by which Adam “was bound as a condition of fellowship and continued blessing.”⁽⁹⁾ Echoing the words of Rushdoony, he taught that “law observance does not imply a covenant of works” (emphasis in original),⁽¹⁰⁾ and concluded elsewhere:

       His covenant with Adam was gracious in character, sovereignly imposed, mutually binding, called for trust and submission on Adam's part, and carried sanctions (blessings or curse). When Adam fell into sin, God mercifully re-established a covenantal relationship with him, one in which the gracious and promissory character of the covenant was accentuated even further — in the promise of a coming Savior, a promise which is progressively unfolded and elaborated upon throughout the Old Testament.⁽¹¹⁾

       The implication in this statement is that the postlapsarian covenant of Genesis 3:15 was the same in substance as the original covenant, or more precisely, that they were merely two administrations of the same covenant. Contrary to Bahnsen's suggestion, however, it is wholly inappropriate to designate the Edenic covenant as a covenant of grace: "Properly defined, grace is not merely the bestowal of unmerited blessings but God's blessing of man in spite of his demerits, in spite of his forfeiture of divine blessings" [emphasis in original].⁽¹²⁾ In other words, grace is an attitude of favor which God exhibits towards those who not only do not deserve such favor, but who actually deserve the opposite — His wrath. In this sense, then, Adam in his prelapasarian state could not have enjoyed God's grace, for as yet he had not sinned and therefore did not deserve His wrath. God's favor was not given to him, but was already his by virtue of his innocence (Genesis 1:26-31; Ecclesiastes 7:29). However, this is not to say that Adam had any inherent right, as a creature, to the eternal life which God promised to him in the Covenant of Works. God did not originally owe Adam anything, but freely bound Himself to grant the man an additional reward in exchange for his obedience. This voluntary act of God toward His creature was therefore not one of grace, but of condescension.⁽¹³⁾
       In the postlapsarian covenant of Genesis 3:15, the situation was altogether different. Having violated the terms of the Covenant of Works, Adam justly incurred the wrath of God and the penalty of death, and with the loss of his innocence came the loss of God's favor. It was impossible for God to re-establish the original covenant relationship with Adam,⁽¹⁴⁾ as Bahnsen suggested, and the new covenant must therefore have been, not merely one of condescension, but of pure grace. Furthermore, it is in this second and altogether different covenant, and not in a renewal of the original Edenic covenant, that Reformed theology finds the basis of the continuity of redemptive history:

       The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.
       Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe. This covenant of grace is frequently set forth in Scripture by the name of a testament, in reference to the death of Jesus Christ the Testator, and to the everlasting inheritance, with all things belonging to it, therein bequeathed.
       This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old testament.
       Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper: which, though fewer in number, and administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory, yet, in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the new testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations.⁽¹⁵⁾

       Historic Covenant theology posits a sharp contrast betweeen the Old Covenant — the Covenant of Works of Eden and its typological republication at Sinai — and the New Covenant — the Covenant of Grace first announced in the protoevangel of Genesis 3:15, further expanded in the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis 15, and finally fulfilled in the Gospel age. It is therefore bi-covenantal, and in this way alone is the proper distinction between law and grace maintained. However, because Theonomy presses the continuity of redemptive history back into Eden, this distinction is effectively destroyed, and the legal demand of the former (“obey and live”) is carried over into the latter, thereby mixing works with faith. As a result, the very definition of redemption itself becomes hopelessly confused.
       For example, building on his identification of the Adamic covenant as one of “grace containing an element of law,” through which was promised “continued blessing” in the Garden rather than eschatalogical life, Bahnsen insisted that both the “Older and New Covenants” were “monergistic covenants of grace” (emphasis in original).⁽¹⁶⁾ He went on to explain: “The New Covenant presents no new covenantal law or moral order.... The New Testament and Covenant continue the same demand for obedience. Entrance to the kingdom is dependent upon attesting obedience.”⁽¹⁷⁾ In this view, the believer is merely forgiven of his past transgressions and then sent back to the law to fulfill its demand for personal obedience. The only difference between the Old and New Covenants, then, is that the latter “brings the power of obedience with it by the agency of the Holy Spirit.”⁽¹⁸⁾
       Bahnsen’s implicit monocovenatalism led him to not only misunderstand the nature of the Edenic covenant, but also its later restatement at Sinai, and to insist that Christians remain under the law as a covenant:

       Now some people would say that New Covenant believers are under the Abrahamic covenant of promise today, but not the Mosaic covenant with its laws. However that is far from the outlook of the scriptural writers. In Galatians 3:21 Paul addresses this question to those who speak of being under one or the other covenant: "Is the law contrary to the promises of God?" And his inspired answer is, "May it never be!" The fact is that all of the covenants of the Old Covenant (that is, all of the Old Testament covenants) are unified as parts of the one overall covenant of grace established by God. Paul spoke of Gentiles who were not part of the Old Covenant economy which included the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants as "strangers to the covenants of the promise" (Eph. 2:12). There were many, progressively revealed aspects to the single promise of God in the Old Testament: many administrations of the one overall covenant of grace. Thus the various covenants of the Old Covenant were all part of one program and plan. Not only were they harmonious with one another, but they are unified with the New Covenant which was promised in Jeremiah 31 and is enjoyed by Christians today (cf. Heb. 8:6-13). There is one basic covenant of grace, characterized by anticipation in the Old Covenant and by realization in the New Covenant (cf. John 1:17)....⁽¹⁹⁾

       Nowhere does the Bible identify the promise of the New Covenant with the law of the Old Covenant, nor does it teach that the New is the “realization” of the Old. Instead, the two covenants are understood as being in opposition to one another, just as Paul’s allegory in Galatians 4:21-31 clearly demonstrates. Bahnsen’s misunderstanding of Galatians 3:21 had Paul affirming the very thing that he wrote the epistle to deny: that God intended law-keeping to overthrow faith alone as the means to securing His favor.
       Theonomy’s denial of the Covenant of Works, and its republication at Sinai, is contrary to the Reformed faith as expressed in the historic creeds and confessions. According to the Westminster Confession, "The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience."⁽²⁰⁾ That the Westminster divines associated the Mosaic covenant with the Adamic Covenant of Works is seen in their choice of proof-texts for this teaching: Genesis 2:17 and Galatians 3:10. The first verse contains the prohibition against eating from the forbidden tree and the second references the "works of the law" with a quotation from Deuteronomy 27:26: "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them." The phrases "the law" and "the book of the law" can mean nothing else but the Mosaic covenant. We see this same association implied in Chapter XIX of the Confession: "God gave to Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience; promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of it: and endued him with power and ability to keep it. This law, after his fall, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness, and, as such, was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in ten commandments, and written in two tables...."⁽²¹⁾ Thus, the Decalogue itself is identified as a summary of the "perfect rule of righteousness" to which Adam was bound, thereby rendering the Sinaitic covenant a restatement of the original Covenant of Works. Again, Genesis 2:17 is connected with Galatians 3:10, with the addition of Romans 2:14, which contrasts the nation of Israel, to which the written law was covenantally delivered, with the Gentiles "which have not the law," and Romans 10:5, which refers directly to the righteous requirements of the Mosaic law. In the Larger Catechism, we read, "The providence of God toward man in the estate in which he was created, was the placing him in paradise... [and] entering into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience, of which the tree of life was a pledge; and forbidding to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon the pain of death."⁽²²⁾ Once again, the divines chose to proof-text this teaching by citing Paul's discussion of the Mosaic law in Galatians 3:12 and Romans 5:5. It should be noted that the usage of the variant terms "covenant of life" and "covenant of works" did not imply different covenants, but the one covenant seen from the two different perspectives of condition and promise — the condition of perfect obedience and the life promised for the rendering of that obedience.
       Since it is obvious that "no mere man after the fall can perfectly keep the ten commandments,"⁽²³⁾ how then can it be said that the Mosaic covenant was, in any way, a covenant of works? It was so in two ways. With reference to the Israelites, the law was a covenant of works on a typological, or temporal, level.⁽²⁴⁾ Their tenure in the promised land was dependent upon their keeping of the terms of the covenant; the "life" promised was therefore possession of the land with all its attendant blessings of health, prosperity, and longevity, and the "death" threatened was expulsion from the land with all its attendant curses of disease, poverty, and calamity. As Moses proclaimed, "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19). This "life and death, blessing and cursing" was expounded in the covenantal sanctions of Deuteronomy 28. On this typological level, the covenant was merely a restatement of the original Covenant of Works, but it could not be a formal establishment thereof because, though broken by mankind in Adam, that covenant had never been abrogated and it was therefore impossible for God to reinstate it afresh for fallen men without dismissing the guilt that had existed up to the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. For God to have thus pardoned the Israelites without also pardoning the rest of the world, and millions of those who had already perished in their sins up to that point in time, would have been unjust and contrary to the holy character of Him with whom is "no respect of persons" (Romans 2:11). Therefore, the Sinaitic covenant, in its relation to the Israelites, could only be an echo of the Covenant of Works, put into place primarily for the temporal purposes mentioned above, and ultimately to remind them of their guiltiness before God and their need of a Redeemer. Thus, the Mosaic law was subservient to, and therefore did not supplant, the Abrahamic covenant of promise, or the Covenant of Grace (Galatians 3:17).
       However, it was with reference to the Redeemer that the Sinaitic covenant was indeed a formal establishment of the original Covenant of Works. Being the Son of God incarnate in human flesh and born of a virgin, Christ was not touched by the guilt of Adam's sin. Therefore, the Covenant of Works could be established with Him, as the second Adam, through the instrument of the Mosaic law without the necessity of God pardoning the rest of mankind. The promise of life for Christ was not merely typological and tied to possession of the land, but an actual promise of glorification and eternal life in the anti-typological Kingdom of Heaven. Furthermore, because He was not a mere creature as was Adam, Christ's obedience to the terms of the covenant was meritorious for both Himself and those joined to Him by faith:

       ...[A]s a human being Christ was certainly subject to the law of God as the rule of life; even believers are never exempted from the law in that sense. But Christ related himself to the law in still a very different way, namely, as the law of the covenant of works. Adam was not only obligated to keep the law but was confronted in the covenant of works with that law as the way to eternal life, a life he did not yet possess. But Christ, in virtue of his union with the divine nature, already had this eternal and blessed life. This life he voluntarily relinquished. He submitted himself to the law of the covenant of works as the way to eternal life for himself and his own.
       The obedience that Christ accorded to the law, therefore, was totally voluntary. Not his death alone, as Anselm said, but his entire life was an act of self-denial, a self-offering presented by him as head in the place of his own.⁽²⁵⁾

       Because of their rejection of the bi-covenantalism of traditional Covenant theology, and their identification of the Adamic covenant and the Covenant of Grace as merely different administrations of the same “everlasting covenant,”⁽²⁶⁾ Theonomists undermine the biblical doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone and prevent the typology of the Old Testament from finding true fulfillment in Christ's covenantal obedience in behalf of His people. Their denial of the Covenant of Works ultimately transforms redemptive history into a program for maintaining God’s favor through law-keeping: "With respect to the overall structuring of covenant theology, once grace is attributed to the original covenant with Adam, preredemptive and redemptive covenants cease to be characterized by contrasting governmental principles in the bestowal of the kingdom on mankind. Instead, some sort of continuum obtains. A combined demand-and-promise (which is thought somehow to qualify as grace but not as works) is seen as the common denominator in this alleged new unity of all covenants."⁽²⁷⁾ This redefinition of Covenant theology is seen most clearly in Theonomy’s view of the law's role in the life of the Christian, which will be the subject of the next chapter.

Endnotes

1. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Sermons of Rev. C.H. Spurgeon of London (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1883), page 172.

2. Rousas John Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, Volume One (Vallecito, California: Ross House Books, 1994), pp. 376-379.

3. Rushdoony, ibid., page 14. On this point, Rushdoony relied on Cornelius Van Til’s redefinition of “covenant” as “exhaustive personal relationship” which reflects the interaction within the “ontological Trinity” (“Covenant Theology,” L.A. Loetscher (editor), The New Schaff-Herzog Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1955], Volume I, page 306). Van Til also rejected the traditional understanding of the Edenic covenant in terms of legal merit in favor of viewing it as a conditional “covenant of mutual love” (The New Hermeneutic [Nutley, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1974], pages 109-161. Incidentally, the objections of the Federal Vision advocates to the idenfication of the original covenant as one of works are identical to those of Rushdoony and Van Til.

4. Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 12.

5. Fisher, Marrow of Modern Divinity, page 31.

6. Colquhoun, The Law and the Gospel, page 11.

7. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page 578.

8. Bahnsen, ibid., page 184.

9. Bahnsen, ibid., page 199.

10. Bahnsen, ibid., page 187.

11. Greg L. Bahnsen, "Cross-Examination: Practical Implications of Covenant Theology," The Counsel of Chalcedon (December, 1992).

12. Meredith G. Kline, "Covenant Theology Under Attack," quoted in Jeong Koo Jeon, Covenant Theology: John Murray's and Meredith G. Kline's Response to the Historical Development of Federal Theology in Reformed Thought (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2004), page 263.

13. Westminster Confession, Chapter VII:1.

14. Fisher, Marrow of Modern Divinity, pages 36-37.

15. Westminster Confession, Chapter VII:2-6.

16. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, pages 184-185.

17. Bahnsen, ibid., pages 184, 202.

18. Bahnsen, ibid., page 190.

19. Greg L. Bahnsen, "God's Uniform Standard of Right and Wrong," Institute for Christian Economics, Volume I, Number 3, November 1978.

20. Westminster Confession, Chapter VII:2.

21. Ibid., Chapter VII:1-2.

22. Larger Catechism, Question 20.

23. Shorter Catechism, Question 103.

24. Meredith G. Kline, "Of Works and Grace," Presbyterion, Spring, 1983, page 65.

25. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 2006), Volume III, page 379.

26. Rousas John Rushdoony, Law and Society (Vallecito, California: Ross House Books, 1982), page 468.

27. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, page 6.