Leithart.com | Theology - Covenant Archives

Category Archive: Theology - Covenant

Covenant of Life - June 21, 2007
Did Adam have to earn access to the tree of life? Not at all. Nothing could be clearer in Genesis 2: God offers every tree of the garden, and makes one - count 'em - one exception, the tree of...

Faith and Creaturehood - June 21, 2007
Did Adam have to exercise faith in the garden, prior to sin? Of course. He was a creature. Creatures are utterly dependent on the Creator for everything, absolutely everything. That's what it means to be a creature. An utterly dependent...

Sloganizing - June 21, 2007
The term "mono-covenantalism" has been tossed around wildly in the last few years. Apparently, mono-covenantalism is really scary and bad. The PCA FV report insists on "bi-covenantalism" as the structure of "Scripture." So, is there one covenant, or are there...

Merit, Adam's and Jesus' - June 09, 2007
A few weeks ago, I criticized an article by Cal Beisner and Fowler White for introducing the notion of "merit" into the inter-Trinitarian relations. On reflection and having read some of Joel Garver's recent discussion of the PCA Federal Vision...

Barth on Covenant of Works - May 16, 2007
Barth offers a challenging critique of the covenant of works. Let me summarize three points, briefly. First, Barth points out that the covenant of works sets law and works as the framework for the entire account of redemptive history and...

Beisner and White Reply - May 03, 2007
Last week, I posted a critique of the argument of Cal Beisner and Fowler White concerning the connection between the covenant of redemption and the covenant of works. Beisner and White replied, and I post their reply here with their...

God and Law - May 02, 2007
All theology is theology proper. Michael Horton says that human beings are created "wired" for the law: "It belongs to us by nature in creation, while the gospel is an announcement of good news in the event of transgression. It...

Adam's faith - April 26, 2007
What should Adam have done when the serpent started talking to Eve? What would you do? You'd scream, probably. But then you'd pray, hard. Because you'd know that only God can deliver you from a dragon. We sometimes think that...

Irenaeus on the covenant of works - April 25, 2007
Horton cites Irenaeus as an early theologian who anticipated the federal theologians by distinguishing between "the 'covenant of law' and the 'covenant of grace.'" In a footnote, he claims that "Irenaeus even distinguishes between 'an economy of law/works' and a...

Natural capacity - April 25, 2007
In his recent book on the covenant, Michael Horton says that under the covenant of works Adam was "a righteous and holy human servant entirely capable of fulfilling the stipulations of God's law." If this is taken in the sense...

Jesus and Covenant of works - July 20, 2006
In what sense did Jesus fulfill the covenant of works? He is clearly the last Adam (Rom 6), and reverses the work of the first Adam. But unless we assume that Torah is a straightforward republication of the covenant of...

Natural/Supernatural in Adamic Covenant - May 23, 2006
Mark Karlberg charges that Francis Junius introduced a natural/supernatural scheme into the Reformed doctrine of the covenant of works. In Karlberg's summary, "The covenant, according to Junius, was established with our first parents by God the Father in the love...

Double Adamic Covenant - May 23, 2006
Many of the Protestant Scholastics argued that a covenant of some sort is "natural" to man, not a "supernatural" addition to a pure, non-covenantal existence. But the "natural" covenant is often distinguished from the specific terms of the covenant of...

Pactum Salutis - May 23, 2006
Barth (CD, 4.1) offers this challenging evaluation of the Protestant Orthodox notion of a Trinitarian covenant: "For God to be gracious to sinful man, was there any need of a special decree to establish the unity of righteousness and mercy...

Calvinism and Chosenness - October 28, 2005
John Milbank's opening essay in the recently-released Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition (edited by James KA Smith and James Olthuis) is a challenging critique of Calvin and the Reformed tradition, one that I hope to interact with more in...

Covenant and Consent - September 05, 2005
How does God's covenant with Israel bind generations that did not consent to the covenant? asked Isaac Abravanel in his 15th-century Commentary on the Pentateuch. This problem was raised in particular by a rabbinic claim that "A person can be...

The Promise of Covenant Theology - May 09, 2005
Covenant theology has great promise: it highlights the fact that redemption takes place in the real world, that redemption involves the creation of a new community, and that the community is necessarily marked out by signs, rites, words, conduct. But...

Lovingkindness to Many Generations - March 26, 2005
Baptists have a hard time grasping how God might be God not only to a believer but also to his children. But a human analogy is readily at hand: Suppose I have a faithful friend who has helped me out...

More from Ward - June 23, 2004
One of the most illuminating chapters of Ward's book on the covenant of works is his discussion of grace and merit in chapter 17. Some highlights: 1) He notes that the word "grace" is used in the NT "without any...

Ward on Covenant of Works - June 22, 2004
Early in Ward's book, he surveys mid sixteenth-century treatments of the effects of Adam's sin, mainly to determine whether writers of that period conceived of God's relationship with Adam as a covenantal one. His evidence suggests several important conclusions: 1)...

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