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The Four: A Survey of the Gospels
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
In answer to a question from a former student about the relations of Jews and Gentiles in Old and New, I offered these points as coordinates for that question:
1. Yes, Gentiles were saved under the Old Covenant, and Israel’s contact with an success with Gentiles increased as time went on. Solomon influences Hiram and other kings in a way that Moses never did; once Israel is scattered around the Mediterranean, kings and emperors start confessing Yahweh as the God of heaven.
2. Calvin gets the relation of OT and NT right, I think, when he says that the OT was “relatively” darker than the NT. It was not completely dark, but it was darker. It was night with a full moon (Passover), moving to the beginning of dawn; but it’s wasn’t daylight yet. Those images get at it. Augustine talks about this in a couple of ways: He takes up the NT language about “symbol” and “substance” or “shadow” and “substance”; OT is shadow and symbol of the coming fulfillment, but those shadows still revealed God and communicate His gifts.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 6:11 am
Merleau-Ponty asks, in Humanism and Terror, “What if it were the very essence of history to impute to us responsibilities which are never entirely ours?”
A very Augustinian, covenantal question.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, March 15, 2010 at 12:34 pm
This past week, a committee of the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) issued a report in a case from the Pacific NW Presbytery regarding my views on a number of theological questions. Among other things, the committee claimed that I denied the “bi-covenantal” structure of Scripture laid out in the covenant of works/covenant of grace distinction in the Confession. They quoted me as saying that the distinction of the Adamic covenant and the covenant of grace is more “administrative” than “soteriological.” The committee said that this shows that I believe there is “no significant difference between the covenants,” and added that my stated views on the difference of the covenants of works and grace was more like the Confession’s statements about the difference of Old and New covenants (which, presumably, is a significant difference?).
The committee’s summary of my views does not appear to take account of my response to the investigative committee, which I wrote last spring. They may well have considered my response, and concluded that it didn’t change their conclusions, but to clarify my own views, and to clarify also the specific views the Presbytery judged to be Confessional, I post below a snippet of that response.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, December 12, 2009 at 9:41 am
Robert Letham is among the best Reformed theologians writing today. His books are deeply researched, up-to-date, his conclusions judicious and balanced; he knows the Reformed tradition, but is not narrow in either his reading or sympathies; he is resolutely Reformed, but makes bold in his recent book on the Westminster Assembly (The Westminster Assembly: Reading Its Theology in Historical Context (Westminster Assembly and the Reformed Faith)
The book is full of historical information: digressions that summarize the development of controverted issues within Reformed theology up to the mid-seventeenth century, summaries of debates at the Assembly (drawn largely from Chad van Dixhoorn’s work on the minutes), and outlines of the basic theology of the Confession. At several points, he notes the flexibility of the Assembly, its effort “to reach the widest measure of agreement possible, within acceptable limits of doctrine and practice” and its refusal to blackball and exclude members who took positions that were finally not represented by the Confession itself.
I was disappointed that I didn’t find more Letham.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, November 27, 2009 at 5:21 pm
In a recent article on Ruth 1:16-17 in CBQ, Mark Smith comments on the relation between covenantal and familial terminology in Ruth and elsewhere. Even when covenants have political dimensions, as in international treaties, they are fundamentally mechanisms for extending kin ties beyond immediate blood relations. Smith writes:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 5:56 am
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 the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life was there for the taking. Adam had only to accept God’s offer, take, and eat.
After the fall, God kept Adam from the tree of life, until Life itself appeared in the flesh to be heard, seen, touched, and eaten.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, June 21, 2007 at 5:55 am
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 being is a being whose stance must be one of expectant trust.
God said, Eat from the trees. But how could Adam produce the fruit? He couldn’t. He had to trust God for food.
God said, It’s not good for man to be alone. Could Adam find a helper suitable to him? He had to trust God.
God put Adam into deep sleep and tore him in two. Adam has to entrust himself to Yahweh just as surely as Abraham did when Yahweh told him to sacrifice Isaac.
Adam went into deep sleep exercising the faith of Hebrews 11 – hoping for something delightful that he had not yet seen.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, June 21, 2007 at 5:51 am
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 two?
Might as well ask if Indian and African elephants are one species or two. Are you mono-elephantine or bi-elephantine?
The answer, of course, depends on what features you’re attending to. Nobody believes that the Adamic covenant in the garden was the same in every respect as the postlapsarian covenants. If nothing else, there’s the difference of Adam’s location: In the first covenant, he’s in the garden; the postlapsarian covenant presumes his exclusion from the garden.
Yet, most everyone agrees that there are fundamental similarities: Both covenants have identical parties – God and Adam; both are initiated by God; both include promises and threats; and so on.
Carrying on a debate between bi- and mono-covenantalism is just that – carrying on. It’s sloganizing, not theology.
If the scholastics taught us nothing else, and they taught us much, they would be valuable for introducing the word “quoddamodo” (“in a certain sense”) into theological discourse.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, June 21, 2007 at 5:45 am
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 study report (at sacradoctrina.com), I want to nuance my criticism a bit.
If saying that the Son “merits” the Father’s good pleasure in the Spirit means that the Son is worthy of the Father’s love, attention, regard, pleasure, then that is certainly the case. This does not mean that the Son initially lacked worthiness and had to earn it; He has always been worthy of the Father’s love, and vice versa, and the Spirit too.
Even this probably needs to be massaged a bit.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, June 9, 2007 at 10:23 am
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 God’s dealings with man. The work of Jesus is understood in these terms, as the fulfillment of the covenant of works, and he argues that even the Christian life is guided by law, in the sense that the law provokes our repentance and guides our obedience. God’s relation to man is centrally that of Lawgiver and servant.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 10:38 am
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 permission.
We offer our sincere thanks to Dr. Leithart for his thoughtful interaction with our observations on the relationship between the doctrine of a meritorious covenant of works and the doctrine of God. We agree with him that reflections on that relationship promise to shed useful light on matters of dispute in the FV controversy. In what follows, we present our response to his evaluation of our thinking.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, May 3, 2007 at 5:47 pm
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 has to be preached, whereas the law belongs to the conscience of every person already. Therefore, the original relationship of humanity to God is one of law and love, not of grace and mercy.”
This makes grace, not law and judgment, the “strange work” of God. Grace comes, apparently, from the “left hand.” Is this not a fundamental reversal of Luther?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, May 2, 2007 at 11:40 am
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 Adam should have stepped up and handled the serpent bare-handed. Perhaps; but that confrontation would have been a confrontation of faith, Adam relying not on his own strength but wholly on God.
Unfallen Adam, in short, should have cried out in faith to his Savior Yahweh to save him. To remain unfallen, he needed to be saved.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 7:08 pm
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 ‘Gospel covenant,’” citing Against Hereies 4.25.
I don’t find the phrases Horton uses in that section of Irenaeus, but perhaps we’re looking at different translations. More substantively, it’s clear that Irenaeus is talking not about the covenant with Adam and the covenant with Christ, but the Abrahamic/Mosaic covenant of circumcision and law and the new covenant. His interpretation of Romans 4 anticipates N. T. Wright more than the federal theologians:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 4:39 pm
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 that Adam had no sinful inclinations, and was posse non peccare, fine.
But Horton repeats this description a page later in a context that suggests he means something else. Adam was enduring a test, he says, to see whether he would obey God or not: “Created for obedience, he was entirely capable of maintaining himself in a state of integrity. Therefore, it is anachronistic to require grace of mercy as the foundation of creation and covenant in the beginning, as Karl Barth and many recent Reformed theologians do.” He goes on to point out, quite rightly, that law is an expression of God’s character, and that “love and law go hand in hand in Scripture.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 4:26 pm
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 works, then any claims about Jesus fulfilling the covenant of works has to be qualified by the fact that he comes into an Israel under Torah. And if the Torah is a dispensation of the covenant of grace, then Jesus comes to fulfill the terms of the covenant of grace. Besides: Does the covenant of works have any provisions for redemptive sacrifice? In Eden before the fall, does God give Adam the hope of salvation from death if he should break covenant? It would appear not: Dying you shall die. The possibility of substitutionary atonement comes with the covenant of grace that is formed with Adam after the fall when the Lord sacrifices for Adam and covers him. So, if Jesus fulfilled the covenant of works, he fulfilled a modified form of that covenant.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 11:53 am
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 of his Son. It held out the promise of supernatural life for obedience and the curse of death and separation from God for disobedience. . . . Although Adam was obliged to render complete and perfect obedience to the law of God by virtue of his debt as a creature (ex puris naturalibus), the covenantal reward of life eternal was strictly one of grace and mercy (ex pacto).”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at 5:37 pm
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 works, the prohibition of the tree of knowledge.
Heidegger fulsomely describes the natural covenant in this way: “It may also be recognized naturally, that there is a covenant intervening between God and man. Man’s conscience keeps asserting that to God the Creator and Lord of man obedience on his part as a creature is bound to be enjoined and He must be loved singly as the most excellent and the Author of all good. In such obedience and love moreover consists the duty which God requires of man. . . .
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at 4:51 pm
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 of God in relation to man, of a special intertrinitarian arrangement and contract which can be distinguished from the being of God? If there was need of such a decree, then the question arises at once of a form of the will of God in which this arrangement has not yet been made and is not yet valid. We have to reckon with the existence of a God who is righteous in abstracto and not free to be gracious from the very first, who has to bind to the fulfillment of HIs promise the fulfillment of certain conditions by man, and punish their non-fulfillment. . . .
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at 3:30 pm
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 the future.
One particularly striking passage had to do with how the conception of the relation of Old and New affected racial conceptions within Calvinism. Milbank contrasts Calvin’s view that the “old alliance [was] salvific in its own right” to the Catholic view that the old covenant foreshadowed and proleptically shared in the new covenant: “It is already for Calvin as if God provides a way for Gentiles to be Jews, rather than the notion that the Jews proleptically participated in a universally human salvation,” which latter conception is “the only possible nonracist theology.”
He goes on: “It is not an accident that Calvinism’s tendency to think that God made ‘new Jews’ led sometimes to racism in Calvinist thought – especially in the case of South Africa and in the United States South where the theological undergirding of racism was overwhelmingly Calvinist (and no so much Baptist). One could mention also Northern Ireland. This incidence of racism has then a tradically ironic relationship to a laudable absence of anti-Semitism, since it is grounded in a certain kind of Philo-Semitism.”
In my opinion, Calvin is closer to the “Catholic” position than Milbank lets on, but the portrait he draws of certain strands of later Calvinism rings true. And I suspect it’s not only bound up with Old-New, but also with construals of covenant of works-covenant of grace.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, October 28, 2005 at 9:56 am
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