Our Covenant Heritage: The Covenanters struggle for unity

Moore, Edwin Nisbet.  Mentor Publishing. 2000.

Nisbet Moore sets the stage with a brief of review of the First and Second Reformations in Scotland. Moore flies through the events of the English Civil War and the accession of the pervert Charles II. Soon the stage is set for the Ejection of 1662 and the coming bloodbath by the Prelates upon the Presbyterians.

This is how Moore segues into the story of his ancestors, John and James Nisbet, and how they didn’t submit to tyrannical government. And while that narrative is quite moving, this means Moore downplays, perhaps unintenionally, heroes like Richard Cameron. While the narrative is scanty in parts, he does outline the events quite well and the reader has a handy reference for battles like Pentland, Drumclog, and Bothwell Bridge.

The next part introduces the Rise of the Society People.  Here the reader is advised to see what happens to the best of people without a stable church government.  Of course, the Presbyterians were being butchered and so they had little choice.  We will see Alexander Shields’ solving of the puzzle below. This also functions as Moore’s annotations upon the memoir of James Nisbet.

The Covenant: What is it?

Moore argues that a Covenanter isn’t immediately someone who holds to the Solemn League or the disowning of the debauchee Charles II.  Rather, a Covenanter is first of all one whose life is anchored in the Covenant of Redemption and its manifestation in the covenant of grace.  Moore relies on the sermons of John Nevay.

His treatment on the Covenant of Works and Covenant of Grace is fairly standard (Moore 195ff). He notes that the parties in the Covenant of Redemption–Father and Son–are different from those in the Covenant of Grace (200). John Nevay writes, “Christ is a testator in the coveanant, [therefore] there must be a party in the covenant, to which the legacy which he does bequeath them by his death is left” (quoted in Moore 201).

The Covenanters also pointed to the conditions in the Covenant of Grace, albeit that condition is faith (205).  Nevay offers six proofs for conditionality on p. 206.  Although this faith-as-instrument is not a meritorious work, the benefits of the covenant are suspended until faith is performed (209).

Lessons for Today

The Revolution Settlement of 1690, while stopping the bloodshed and driving the papists out, brought new problems:  should the Society People join the Scottish Church or continue in (self-imposed) exile?  Alexander Shields, anticipating and rebutting proto-Steelite arguments, asserts joining quite forcefully (269-282):

(1) We should seek union unless fundamentals are at stake.  We withdraw, for example, from the Indulged Ministers, when the nature of the church is a “broken state.”  That no longer applies in the Settlement.

(2) Differences in judgment and practice are not grounds for separation, even if they guilty do not admit error.  Hannah continued to worship despite the error of Eli’s sons.

(3) Confession of Sin is essential to communion with God, but not to fellowship with believers (273).

(4) While we should withdraw from false doctrine–prelacy, popery, Arminianism, tyranny–the Settlement ministers, no matter how compromised they had been, were also against these errors (if only in principle).

Moore’s book ends with an application of modern Covenanting principles (magistrate’s upholding both tables, etc).  Moore writes warm stories of the Covenanters’ martyrdoms, and the passages by James Nisbet are especially moving.  While Moore skillfully handles issues of the covenant, he noted that he would address the Bostonian rejection of the Covenant of Redemption.  He never did.  Aside from that, a fantastic read.

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Review: Puritan Theology (Beeke and Jones)

Beeke, Joel.  and Jones, Mark.  Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life.  Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books.

This is one of those “game-changer” books.  Beeke provides decades of pastoral reflection from the Puritans (and admittedly, there is a lot of repetition) while Jones brings clear Christological reflection from giants like Thomas Goodwin and John Owen.  The book is structured around the standard loci.  While we perhaps would like more from some chapters, the overwhelming amount of primary sources, and the clear mastery of secondary literature, allows us to continue the research if necessary.

My review will reflect my biases and what I like to study.  That can’t be helped, otherwise an exegetical review of this book would take ten pages.  This book is a Christological masterpiece.  I learned more from the chapters on Christology than I did in my week-long seminary class on Christology.  I agree with Carl Trueman, this book is both doctrinal and devotional.

Christological Supralapsarianism

In regard to the end, Goodwin viewed mankind as unfallen in His election of human beings, but fallen in His decrees as the means to that end” (155).

“Means” — what Christ, as redeemer of God’s elect, performed for his people.  It has reference to Christ’s redemptive work, which presupposes a fall.

Key point: “whether God’s decree regarding both the end and the means was pitched ‘either wholly upon man considered in the mass of creability [potential human beings] afore the Fall, or wholly upon the mass of mankind considered and viewed first as fallen into sin” (Jones, quoting Goodwin 156).

The decree to elect falls under a twofold consideration: a) regarding the end, the fall was not a necessity…but an impediment; b) the decree to elect may be understood also with respect to man fallen, which God foresaw, as the means.

Election has reference to the end.  Here God decrees to give men eternal life without consideration of the fall.  But when we look at predestination, we view man as fallen.  Predestination involves the means to the end.

Covenants

While some have noted concern on the section of the Covenant of Works, the section on the Covenant of Redemption is fantastic. Differences between Covenant of Grace and Covenant of Redemption

(1) CoR sprang from grace in both parties (Father and Christ), whereas the CoG sprang from grace only from the Father.
(2) Though both are everlasting, only the CoR is eternal.
(3) The parties in the CoR are equal; the parties in CoG (and CoW) are not.
(4) The parties differ in both covenants.
(5) There is no mediator in the CoR
(6) The promises of the New Covenant (such as a new heart and forgiveness of sins) cannot be applied to Christ.
(7) Christ was not threatened in the CoR, whereas those in the CoG are (Heb. 2.3; 1 Cor. 16.22).
(8) The conditions in each covenant differ.
(9) The CoR did not require man’s consent.

Taken from Patrick Gillespie, Ark of the Covenant Opened, 113-117, quoted in Beeke and Jones, 254.

On Coming to Christ

The chapter on preparationism, while correct in rebutting the “Calvin vs. Calvinists/Preparationists” thesis, didn’t quite address the reality of those covenant children  who hear the covenant promises from earliest days and trust in the Christ of these promises, yet don’t appear to go through the preparationist stages.  

Owen on Justification and Union

For Puritans like Owen and Goodwin, there is a Three fold union

Immanent: being elected in union with Christ from all eternity
Transient: union with Christ in time past; to wit, his mediatorial death and resurrection
Applicatory: experience of union in the present time.

Christ “apprehends” and gives his Spirit to the believer.

Owen: Christ is the first and principal grace in respect of causality and efficacy” (20:150). Union is the cause of the other graces.  It is the ground of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to believers.  Such is the logical priority of union regarding justification.  The act whereby Christ unites himself to the elect is the same act whereby he regenerates them (3:464).

Witsius: the elect are united to Christ when his Spirit takes a hold of them and infuses a new principal of life.  Yet, there is a mutual union whereby the soul draws near to Christ by faith only.  From this follows the other benefits of the covenant of grace.

Charnock: justification gives us a right; regeneration gives us a fitness (3:90).

Conclusion

This review did not cover all, or even much of the book.  Indeed, it could not.  But not only does it encourage you to read the Puritans, it points one to a number of crucial studies on the Puritans.

Trinity and the Covenant?

One of the criticisms of some Kuyperians is that they read Covenantal relations into the Trinity, and if that’s true, then there is historical development in the Trinity. Obviously, that’s wrong.

But of course there are covenantal relations in the Trinity. What’s the Covenant of Redemption all about, anyway?  I don’t think that’s the problem.  The problem seems to be the claim that the Trinity is the pattern for Covenantal thinking.  Well, why wouldn’t it be?  The Trinity is the source of all good theology.  Think about it: if the Trinity isn’t the source of all good theology, then where did covenantal relations come from?  We are now on the edge of ontological dualism.

Trial and Triumph of Faith

Rutherford, Samuel.  The Trial and Triumph of Faith.  Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth.

In this volume you are able to see a side of Samuel Rutherford that isn’t quite as flowery as his *Letters,* nor as analytical as *Lex, Rex.* The layout is relatively simple: 27 sermons on Christ’s words to the Syro-Phoneician. But in these sermons Rutherford examines the nature of faith, justification, and the Covenant of Redemption.

The book represents both the best of and limitations of Scottish Presbyterianism. When Rutherford waxes eloquent, he has no equal. But, likewise, when he analyzes a topic it goes on…and on…and on.

The Topics covered:

God’s love: it is infinite in its act but not in its object; the way of carrying on his love is infinite (41). “Mercy floweth not from God essentially but of mere grace” (42), otherwise universalism would entail. “For what God doth by necessity of his nature and essence, that he cannot but do.”

Covenants

Rutherford ties the promises of the covenant of grace as exemplified in the Davidic covenant (53). Son of David: Christ had a special relation to Abraham, being his seed; but more special to David, because the covenant was in a special manner established with David, as a king, and the first king in whose hand the…Church…was laid down” (74-75). Df. of covenant = “A joint and mutual bargain between two, according to which, they promise freely such and such things to each other” (75).

The promises of Galatians 3.16 apply not to the hypostatic Christ nor the mystical Christ, but to the mediatorial Christ (very important discussion, 81-83).
(1) Christ is the heir of all things and we are co-heirs with him.
(2) The covenant (Of Redemption) was manifested in time but transacted in eternity.
(3) Not every promise made is a promise made to us (84). Christ is promised a “name above every name,” and this promise cannot be made to us. Christ is promised a willing seed; we are not.
(4) This covenant structures salvation (86).

Guilt and Justification
“Justification is a removal of sin by law-way” (195). Obligation to external punishment is removed.
Formal Justification: this goes along with the order of cause, time, and a required condition of apprehending Christ’s righteousness (209).
Guilt: the guilt of sin is not the same as sin itself (222). Macula, or the blot of sin, is defilement. “Guilt” is that which issueth from the macula because you aren’t perfectly spotless. Rutherford notes that this “blot” has different relations:
(1) Blot in relation to the law. This is formally sin and not guilt.
(2) Blot in relation to God, as offended and injured. This is formally removed in justification (224).

The reality of virtual actions = no legal fiction: “The proposition is sure: for if Christ was so made sin, and punished for sin, and liable to suffer for sin, and yet had not any sinful or blameworthy guilt on him” (226), then we can also say that God declares me just on Christ.

Rutherford ends by tying the current situation of Britain with eschatological reflections. Very beautiful and moving.

Rutherford and Covenant, some notes

From the following passages in Rutherford, we can note:

1. The eternal covenant is the Covenant of Redemption (CoR) made between Father and Son.
2. It is different from the Covenant of Grace (CoG) because the promises in the two covenants are different.  When Christ met the conditions of the CoR, he was given the seat at the Father’s right hand, an elect seed, etc.
3. That is not what is promised believers in the Covenant of Grace.  That promise includes remission of sins et al.
4. Therefore, as some critics of Reformed theology charge, if Christ is in the same CoG as believers, then it appears that some kind of adoptionist Christology follows.
5. Yet, (2) shows that can’t be the case.  Further, (1) militates against adoptionism.
6. The Person who authored the CoR is the same person who suffered on the cross.
7. Hence, he cannot be a product of the union.
8. Hence, we are not Nestorians.

“Whosoever receives in his body the Seals of the Covenant of Grace, Circumcision, and Baptism, and yet needs no putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by Circumcision, and needs no forgiveness of sin, no regeneration, no burying with Christ in Baptism, as Colossians 2:11 , 12; Romans 6:3-5, and eats the Passover, and needs not that the Lamb of God take away his sins, as John 1:29 since he is holy, and without sin, he must be under the Covenant, and God must be his God, in some other Covenant than sinners are…Christ must have received Seals for other uses and ends, then sinners received them” (Covenant of Life Opened, pg. 418)

If one affirms that Christ is in the same COG as sinners, he cannot escape from Robinson’s argument that this is an ipso facto admission that Christ is a Son of God by adoption as believers are, and not by nature…

Rutherford says of the Covenant of Redemption,

“it is an eternal transaction and compact between Jehovah and the second Person the Son of God, who gave personal consent that he should be the Undertaker, and no other…Christ is predestinate the head, the firstborn of the house, and of the many brethren, and say Amen to the choice, and we are chosen in him, as our head, and he was foreordained the Mediator, and the Lamb before the foundation of the world was laid, to be slain for our sin.” (pg. 429-430)

The Sum of Saving Knowledge states,

“2b The sum of the Covenant of Redemption is this: God having freely chosen to life a certain number of lost mankind, for the glory of his rich grace, did give them, before the world began, to God the Son, appointed Redeemer, that, upon condition he would humble himself so far as to assume the human nature, of a soul and a body, to personal union with his divine nature, and submit himself to the law, as surety for them, and satisfy justice for them, by giving obedience in their name, even to the suffering of the cursed death of the cross, he should ransom and redeem them all from sin and death, and purchase to them righteousness and eternal life, with all saving graces leading there to, to be effectually, by means of his own appointment, applied in due time to every one of them. This condition the Son of God (who is Jesus Christ our Lord) did accept before the world began, and in the fulness of time came into the world, was born of the Virgin Mary, subjected himself to the law, and completely paid the ransom on the cross: But by virtue of the foresaid bargain, made before the world began, he is in all ages, since the fall of Adam, still upon the work of applying actually the purchased benefits of the elect; and that he does by way of entertaining a covenant of free grace and reconciliation with them, through faith in himself; by which covenant, he makes over to every believer a right and interest to himself, and to all his blessings”