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The Preached Covenant

Sherman Isbell

The Bible teaches what Reformed theologians have called a covenant of redemption - an agreement in eternity between God the Father and God the Son, in which the Father sent his Son to undergo humiliation in order to redeem sinners (John 5:30, 17:4). The Son willingly accepted this commission from the Father (John 10:17-18, Phil. 2:4-8, Heb. 10:5-10), and the Father promised the Son that upon the completion of his work there would be an inheritance as the fruit of his labors (Isa. 53:10-12, John 17:5 and 24).

However, most of the biblical references to covenant do not speak of a covenant between the Father and the Son, but of a covenant between God and his people (Gen. 17:1-2 and 7, Deut. 29:10-13, and Isa. 55:3-4). Reformed theologians have distinguished between a covenant of redemption and a covenant of grace or reconciliation. The covenant of grace is the communion between God and his people. The covenant of redemption sets forth the humiliation and atonement of Christ as the means of procuring our redemption, and is the foundation for the reciprocal relationship of fellowship between God and the people he has redeemed. The enjoyment of fellowship between God and his people in the covenant of grace is dependent upon the procuring work of Christ under the covenant of redemption.

In this essay we will discuss some aspects of the covenant of grace. There are today many winds of doctrine from quarters other than the Puritan heritage of the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. Our intention is to set forth clearly what is taught in the Westminster standards, and then contrast this with a contemporary alternative to the covenant theology of our subordinate standards.

Robert Rollock and his background

We may begin by a consideration of the teaching of two Scottish Presbyterian theologians who contributed significantly to the discussion of our topic. Robert Rollock (1555-99) was the first principal of Edinburgh University. In training his scholars, he drew upon the theology of the Heidelberg Catechism, as well as upon treatises by Theodore Beza which set forth Genevan orthodoxy in the generation after Calvin. Rollock published a large number of biblical commentaries which were highly commended by Beza. Rollock's major work, A Treatise of God's Effectual Calling, was published in 1597. In this book he uses the covenant as a key to understanding many areas of Christian doctrine. He was one of the first to use the concept of the covenant for arranging and tying together all the subjects of Reformed systematic theology.

Rollock is significant because he taught that everything in the Word of God may be designated either as a promise or a condition under some divinely-appointed covenant, so that God says nothing to men except through one covenant or another. Rollock assigns the various promises of Scripture according to the covenant to which they belong. First, the covenant of works must be explained to sinners. That covenant proposed life upon the condition of a perfect compliance with the law. Exposition of the covenant of works from the pulpit is intended to bring conviction to the sinner, who is brought to see what is required of him, and that he is unable to perform that requirement. Such preaching is designed to overthrow the sinner's confidence that in his unregenerate nature he would be able to conform to the law of God. Then are declared the promises of the covenant of grace, wherein Christ and his benefits are freely offered to sinners upon condition of faith. Hence, all the promises of Scripture fall under some covenant, and only under the covenant of grace can there be a fulfillment of the condition and consequently a reception of the promises.

Rollock discusses in particular the condition for appropriating the blessings of the covenant of grace. The significance of denoting faith as a condition is that faith directs us to Christ. If anyone would suggest that because this covenant is a free covenant, there could be no condition attached to it, Rollock explains that the gracious character of the covenant is not in jeopardy when faith is said to be its condition. For it is not properly because of faith that God performs the promises of the covenant, but because of the merits of Christ, in whom we trust. "Whereas God offereth righteousness and life under condition of faith, yet doth he not so respect faith in us, which is also his own gift, as he doth the object of faith, which is Christ, and his own free mercy in Christ, which must be apprehended by faith; for it is not so much our faith apprehending, as Christ himself, and God's mercy apprehended in him, that is the cause wherefore God performeth the promise of his covenant unto us, to our justification and salvation."(1)

Central to Rollock's covenant theology is his doctrine of calling. As we have noted, his exposition of the covenant is entitled A Treatise of Effectual Calling. Rollock says that the preaching of the gospel is a publishing to sinners of God's covenant of grace. This preached covenant is the first element in an effectual calling. Eternal life is offered under the covenant of grace to men who are still unjust and unregenerate, lying dead in trespasses and in sins. But the Spirit works faith in those predestinated unto life, enabling them to respond to God's call, and this efficacious work of the Spirit in the hearts of the elect is the second element in effectual calling.

Rollock speaks of the double grace or privilege given in calling: "Our calling . . . is by God's free grace, and that in a double respect. For first in our effectual calling, the publishing of the covenant and the preaching of the gospel is of the only free grace of God. . . . Next, faith, whereby we receive the promise of the covenant, which is offered unto us in Christ, is of the mere grace of God. . . . That former grace may be called the grace of our calling; this grace is common to all that are called, elect and reprobate. But the latter grace in our effectual calling may be called the grace of faith, appertaining only to the elect, for it is given only to those that are predestinated to life everlasting to believe. . . . For whereas there is a double mercy of God in our effectual vocation, to wit, first, an offering of Christ with all his benefits in the covenant of grace or the gospel; secondly, faith to receive Christ being offered, . . . therefore, in our effectual calling two graces must be understood, the grace of our vocation, or of offering Christ unto us, and the grace of faith, or of receiving Christ by us."(2)

Rollock was not saying anything novel when he declared that the covenant of grace is outwardly administered to many who hear the Word preached, with only the elect actually receiving the saving blessings in the covenant. In this, Rollock stands in a clearly-defined line of influence, from John Calvin through Olevian. Caspar Olevian (1536-87) was a pupil of Calvin's before returning to his native Germany, to become the pastor of a large congregation in Heidelberg, and to teach dogmatics at Heidelberg and Herborn. He was one of the two authors of the Heidelberg Catechism. In The Substance of the Covenant of Grace (1585), Olevian wrote of the outward administration of the covenant through preaching and the sacraments, with the substance of the covenant being enjoyed only by the elect, in whose hearts the Holy Spirit creates a faith to receive the saving mercies offered in the covenant. Many who are exposed to the administration of the covenant through preaching do not appropriate the substance of the covenant. Olevian notes that the gift of faith was procured for the elect by Christ, who undertook to be a sponsor for his people. Christ entered an eternal covenant with the Father on behalf of the elect, and then, by his death, secured the gift of faith for his people.

Behind Olevian, at the fountainhead of both German Reformed and British Puritan teaching, is Calvin (1509-64), who also wrote of the covenant promise extended to all who heard the Word preached. In the seventy-second of his Sermons Upon Deuteronomy, a series preached in 1555-56, Calvin speaks of the election of Israel, and then of a second, narrower election unto eternal life. The broader or general election is the administration of the covenant of grace among the children of Abraham. The promise of the covenant was made to all the race and lineage of Israel, but the promise of the covenant was sealed in the heart only when the Holy Spirit gave faith to elect individuals.

Commenting on Deut. 10:15, Calvin says: "See here, I pray you, the election of God, whereby he putteth such difference between the lineage of Abraham and all the rest of the world, that he made the same lineage his church of purpose, that the signs of his favor and of his covenant should remain there, and that his name should be called upon there, so as he offered the promises of salvation to them that descended of the same race and lineage. . . . Lo, here, I say, a general election that belonged to all the children of Abraham, and yet was that grace to be confirmed by faith but in a part of them. . . . Now then, God's general election which extended to the whole people was not sufficient, but it behooved every man to be partaker of it in his own peculiar behalf. And how was that to be done? By faith. . . . Lo, here, the double election of God. The one extendeth to the whole people, because circumcision was given indifferently to all, both small and great, and the promises likewise were common. But yet for all that, God was fain to add a second grace, by touching the hearts of his chosen, namely of such as he listed to reserve to himself, and those came unto him, and he made them to receive the benefit that was offered them."(3)

When Calvin discusses the doctrine of predestination in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, he devotes three sections (III.xxi.5-7) to distinguishing between God's covenant with Israel and God's election of individual Israelites. Calvin speaks of three groups among men, namely the heathen outside the church, those externally invited by the preached Word, and the elect. Those sitting under the preached Word "hold a kind of middle place." Calvin says: "The reason why the general election of the people is not always firmly ratified, readily presents itself - viz. that on those with whom God makes the covenant, he does not immediately bestow the Spirit of regeneration, by whose power they persevere in the covenant even to the end. The external invitation, without the internal efficacy of grace which would have the effect of retaining them, holds a kind of middle place between the rejection of the human race and the election of a small number of believers. The whole people of Israel are called the Lord's inheritance, and yet there were many foreigners among them. Still, because the covenant which God had made to be their Father and Redeemer was not altogether null, he has respect to that free favor rather than to the perfidious defection of many. . . .."(4)

If God through the preached covenant offers eternal life to sinners, is there a covenant condition that defines the responsibility of the hearer to respond? Calvin, like Rollock, says that there is. In the fifty-third sermon on Deuteronomy, Calvin refers again to God's general election, by which Calvin means the administration of the covenant of grace in the church through the preaching of the Word. Calvin speaks of how this privileged hearing will come to nothing if there is no faith: "Now hereupon Moses addeth, That God will keep covenant to a thousand generations of them that love him: yea through his mercy, saith he. For as much as he treateth of the general election, therefore he exhorteth the people to bethink themselves advisedly. Note ye, saith he, that for as much as God hath promised your father Abraham to be the God of his seed after him, he will not fail you. But yet for all that, look that ye walk warely, for the covenant is made with condition, that ye must be sound and have a right meaning heart. Therefore think not but that your God can drive you out of his house and out of his church, if he find you unworthy of the benefit which he hath offered unto you. With that meaning doth Moses speak, when he putteth here a difference between them that love him and keep his commandments, and them that hate him. Now by these words we be taught, that when God offereth us his word, it is already an allying of himself to us, and a giving of us a record of our salvation, but yet doth it not follow that we may therefore be careless. Nay rather we must be quickened up to embrace the promises which he sendeth us, so as we may rest wholly upon them, and be steadfastly settled in them all our life long. That is a thing whereupon it behooveth us to think. True it is that God layeth open his heart unto us when his word is preached unto us. There we may be put in mind of his love, and also have full assurance of our salvation. But yet must that word enter in unto our heart, and prevail with us, which thing is not done but through faith. And so let us understand that God's election is as it were defeated by us, unless we be constant and continue steadfastly in it to the end."(5)

Samuel Rutherford

Samuel Rutherford (1600-61) expounded the promises and condition of the covenant of grace in his full-length treatment of covenant theology entitled The Covenant of Life Opened (1655), written less than a decade after the Westminster standards. Rutherford was separated from his Church of Scotland congregation at the command of bishops who were offended by the publication of his first book, a broadside against Arminianism. Rutherford took a large part in the debates at the Westminster Assembly, and worked with the drafting committee which drew up the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. He became professor of divinity at St. Andrews in 1638. His reputation as a writer was international. His university lectures, styled "an examination of Arminianism," were posthumously published in 1668 at Utrecht in the Netherlands. Rutherford is arguably Scotland's greatest theologian, a contemporary and counterpart to John Owen.

Rutherford describes the visible church with its means of grace as the place where the covenant of grace is externally administered. There are more in covenant with God than only those he has chosen to salvation. Those who make a visible profession in the church are externally and conditionally in covenant with God. But no one obtains the thing promised in the covenant, unless he fulfills the condition of the covenant, which is faith. Rutherford points out that it is the Anabaptists who hold that "there can be none but real believers under the New Testament in covenant with God,"(6) for they make no proper distinction between the outward administration of the covenant in the gospel offers, and the internal appropriation of the thing promised. "The Anabaptists ignorantly confound the promise and the thing promised, and covenant and benefits covenanted."(7)

For Rutherford, as for Calvin and Rollock, there is an external administration of the covenant by preaching, in which the promises of the covenant are offered to sinners generally. "All that are under the call and offer of Christ in the preached gospel, as Prov. 9:1-4, Matt. 22:3, Luke 14:16-18, etc., are externally in covenant. . . . The promise is to you and to your children can have no other sense than, the promise and word of the covenant is preached to you and to your children in you, and this is to be externally in covenant, both under the Old and New Testament. . . . The word of the covenant is preached to you, an offer of Christ is made in the preached gospel to you. Then it cannot be denied but the promise is to all the reprobate in the visible church whether they believe or not, for Christ is preached and the promises of the covenant are preached to Simon Magus, to Judas and all the hypocrites who stumble at the word, to all the Pharisees, as is clear, Matt. 13:20-23, Acts 13:44-45, Acts 18:5-6, Matt. 21:43, I Pet. 2:7-8."(8) This is the position taken in Westminster Larger Catechism 68.

The purpose of the conditional promise is to direct sinners to Christ as the only mediator. Faith in Christ is the condition to interest us in him. Therefore, the preaching of the conditional promise, in the external administration of the covenant, is a means to the end of salvation. "External covenanting goes before internal covenanting as the means before the end, and the cause before the effect, for faith comes by hearing of a sent preacher, and the preaching of the gospel is a saving means of begetting a new heart and of a new spirit. Hence 1. All must be first externally in covenant before they can be internally and really in covenant. 2. God is a God simply to some, and no more but a God to them in regard of outward church privileges, as the word, seals, protection, peace, hedge of discipline, his planting and watering by a ministry."(9)

Rutherford was also the author of several volumes written against the Separatist theory of church order, which depicted the church visible as made up of those who had already appropriated the substance of the covenant. Rutherford identifies this as the crux of the difference between the Separatists and the Presbyterians, complaining that his opponents take the privileges and promises proper to the invisible church and give all these to the visible church. In Christ's parable of the tares and the wheat, Rutherford understands the field to be the visible church, in which the seed of the Word is sown. The Presbyterian theory was that the church visible is a company of the externally called, and being attached to the church is a way to salvation.

Rutherford speaks of the preaching of the Word in the visible church as a draw-net, gathering the elect "by a visibly and audibly preached covenant."(10) Christ's church is the work-house of grace, where the Lord uses the means of grace to bring sinners to an internal appropriation of the covenant. "They are within the net, and in the office-house of grace the visible church, where the word is preached to children, who are to be taught, and the Lord reckons it among the favors that he bestows not on every nation, but only on his own covenanted Israel, that the word of the gospel to gather them and their children, and his statutes and his judgments are declared and preached to them, and that the oracles of God and the promises are committed to them."(11) Rutherford speaks movingly of the staggering privilege of being exposed to the means of grace in the visible church, and of sitting under the offers of the gospel: "But it's a rich mercy that professors are dwelling in the work-house of the grace of God, within the visible church. They are at the pool side, near the fountain, and dwell in Immanuel's land where dwells Jehovah in his beauty, and where are the golden candlesticks, and where there run rivers of wine and milk. Such are expectants of grace and glory. To such the marriage table is covered, eat if they will."(12)

As did Calvin and Rollock before him, Rutherford says that it is a great favor from God when a congregation has Christ and his benefits offered in the preaching. Rutherford distinguishes the grace of predestination from the gracious privilege of sitting under the means of grace. "It's a state of common grace to be within the visible church. . . . The same blessings of Abraham come on us Gentiles. But he and all his seed were blessed and in grace by the external call of the covenant. . . . And this external calling is of grace and so grace, no merit, as well as predestination to life is grace, or for grace. For whosoever are called, not because they are elect, but because freely loved of such a God and without merit called, . . . they are in a state of grace. But so are all within the visible church. . . . And external covenanting with God is of itself free grace and a singular favor bestowed of God."(13) Why this insistence by the old Reformed writers upon the privilege and favor of being under the means of grace? They believed that the outward administration of the covenant of grace is the means which the Lord ordinarily uses to communicate to us the benefits of redemption (Westminster Shorter Catechism 85).

But for all this privilege, many who are externally in covenant never possess the forgiveness and eternal life promised in the covenant, because they never respond with the condition required in the covenant, namely faith. The reason why they never believe is that God never gives them a new heart. There are conditional promises made in the external covenant, and the purpose of these is to direct us to Christ the object of faith, and to impress upon us our responsibility. But there are also promises in Scripture which are not conditional but absolute; the promise of a new heart is made only to the elect. "It is no inconvenient that the reprobate in the visible church be so under the covenant of grace as some promises are made to them and some mercies promised to them conditionally, and some reserved, special promises of a new heart and of perseverance belong not to them. For all the promises belong not the same way to the parties visibly and externally, and to the parties internally and personally in covenant with God. So the Lord promiseth life and forgiveness shall be given to these who are externally in the covenant, providing they believe, to these that are only externally in covenant. And yet he promiseth both to the elect."(14) This is the position taken in the Westminster Confession, VII.iii., and Larger Catechism 32, and 63 with 68. Rutherford says, "Not that he keeps not covenant even to external confederates, to wit, the conditional covenant. For if they should believe they should be saved. But he promised not a new heart and faith to them."(15)

If it be objected that "such as are externally within the covenant, are not really and indeed within the covenant of grace," the response is that "the adverb really relates to the real fruit of the fulfilled covenant, and so such as are only externally within the covenant are not really within the covenant, for God never directed nor intended to bestow the blessing covenanted, nor grace to perform the condition of the covenant upon them. But they are really covenanted and engaged by their consented profession to fulfill the covenant. . . . This is the special and principal covenanted blessing, I will give them a new heart, which must not be called a simple prediction, though a prediction it is. But it is also a real promise made absolutely to the elect, which the Lord fulfills in them, and this is called the covenant. . . . And therefore we cannot say that this promise of a new heart is made to all that are commanded to believe and repent and be baptized. For elect and reprobate and all are under these commands, if they be members of the visible church. But the promise of a new heart is not made to all within the visible church."(16)

Rutherford says that this distinction between conditional promises and absolute promises corresponds to that between the preceptive and decretive wills of God. The preceptive or revealed will of God declares the obligation and offer in the visibly-preached covenant. The decretive or secret will of God is manifested in the Lord's sovereign bestowal of a new heart. Rutherford observes that attention to this distinction will preserve us against the Antinomian distaste for the responsibilities laid out in the visible covenant, and against the Arminian aversion to divine prerogative. We will understand the place for both human agency and divine sovereignty. Rutherford says, "The new covenant must be considered, 1. As preached according to the approving and commanding will of God. 2. As it is internally and effectually fulfilled in the elect according to the decree and the Lord's will of purpose. . . . For Antinomians and legal justitiaries miserably err in both extremities."(17)

Rutherford also writes about the human parties in the covenant of grace. The parties in the external administration of the covenant include many who are not parties in the covenant internally appropriated. "The parties contractors in the covenant preached are God, and all within the visible church, whether elect or reprobate, and their seed, they professing the gospel, . . . and they were not all the chosen of God."(18) On the one hand, this must be said in opposition to the Antinomians and Anabaptists, who speak only of the internal covenant made with the elect, and will not acknowledge a visible covenant with conditions required of men. And on the other hand, the Arminian tenet of salvation by human free will is excluded when we refer to the elect as the only parties in that internal covenant which the Lord efficaciously fulfills. "Now though salvation be offered, yet the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, and merited by the ransom and price of his blood, can be decreed and intended in the preached gospel to none but to the elect."(19) In this sense, it may be said that the elect are the proper parties contracting in the covenant of grace.(20)

While Rutherford was in London, as a commissioner from the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Assembly, he was apprehensive about the quick spread of both Arminianism and Antinomianism, and he carefully assessed and condemned these opposite errors, often in the same book. Two hundred years later, the Scottish Presbyterian theologian "Rabbi" John Duncan (1796-1870) observed in his Colloquia Peripatetica: "Samuel Rutherford, in his work on Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself, gives us some unpretending but deep philosophy. He denies power in the will against the Arminian, and asserts it against the Antinomian position. And any other doctrine of power uncreaturifies the creature. It either brutifies man or deifies him."(21) That is, the Arminian ascribes divine powers to the man who is believed to frustrate God's decree, and so deifies man. And the Antinomian exalts divine sovereignty so as to remove man's agency, and thus brutifies man. The Antinomianism against which Rutherford wrote would not deny necessarily that believers are to walk in righteousness for sanctification, but its hallmark was and still is an exalting of divine sovereignty in a way foreign to the Scriptures and to the Reformed faith, so that teaching about human agency is viewed as a threat to imputed righteousness, or a concession to moral ability in the unregenerate. If we learn anything from Scotland's greatest theologian, it should be that whenever a man's attention is fixed upon opposing only one of these dangers, Arminianism or Antinomianism, he is already falling into the contrary error. Any statement of biblical teaching on these subjects must be carefully proportioned to condemn aberrant views in both directions.

This teaching about an outward aspect of the covenant as a means of bringing sinners to salvation is not a peculiarity of infralapsarians, with their special appreciation for the historical means by which the divine purpose is executed. We should remember that Rutherford was a supralapsarian, and had such a high doctrine of the sovereignty of the divine will that he believed, against Owen, that the Lord could have pardoned sin merely by an act of his will, without recourse to a satisfaction of divine justice, as by an atonement. But Rutherford does not exalt divine sovereignty at the expense of biblical teaching about the means which God uses in history for accomplishing his own purpose.

Rutherford vigorously defends the conditional promises of the external covenant, as being the sound Reformed defence against Antinomianism. Conditions in the covenant set forth responsible human agency. "The Antinomians do also own no covenant of grace, but this wherein the new heart is given and the condition is both promised and given. And Dr. Crisp saith . . . 'The new covenant is without any conditions whatsoever upon man's part. Man is tied to no condition that he must perform, that if he do not perform, the covenant is made void by him.' Answer. Man is under a condition of believing, and tied to believe, so as the wrath of God abides upon him, he shall not see life nor be justified, if he believe not, John 3:18, 36; Rom. 10:6-9."(22)

Finally, Rutherford comments on the connection between the covenant of redemption or suretyship, and the covenant of grace or reconciliation. The covenant of God with sinners is dependent upon the intertrinitarian covenant, and upon the redemption procured by Christ under the terms of that eternal covenant of redemption. "It is not the same covenant that is made with Christ and that which is made with sinners. They differ in the subject or the parties contracting. In this of suretyship, the parties are Jehovah God as common to all the three on the one part, and on the other the only Son of God the second person undertaking the work of redemption. In the covenant of reconciliation, the parties are God the Father, Son and Spirit, out of free love pitying us, and lost sinners who had broken the covenant of works. Hence the covenant of suretyship is the cause of the stability and firmness of the covenant of grace."(23)

The covenant of grace cannot stand by itself, because of the weakness of the believer. But if our trust is placed in the faithfulness of God to the articles of the covenant of redemption, we need not fear for our salvation. "Though the covenants of suretyship and of reconciliation differ, yet must they not be separated. But faith principally must be fixed upon the most binding covenant relation between Jehovah and the Son of God. Eye Christ always in the covenant, else it's but the sheath or scabbard of a covenant, and a letter to us." Faith should fix upon the covenant of redemption. The promises which the believer inherits must come to him through Christ's work of redemption. "Christ is the chief and principal thing promised, and other things that are freely given us by promise are given to us with Christ, or after that he hath given us Christ. . . . Our blood relation to the family stands by Christ, interest to promises comes all this way. The Lord's method is, Get first Christ, then all the promises are yours, for they follow him. And Christ well manages covenant promises as they tend to the good of his own."(24)

The Westminster standards

As noted, Rutherford worked on the select drafting committee which drew up the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and it is highly appropriate to consider the extent to which the teaching of Calvin, Olevian, Rollock and Rutherford about the preached covenant is reflected in our subordinate standards. We shall find a striking identity of doctrine.

The Confession's chapter Of God's Covenant with Man introduces the covenant of works and the covenant of grace as means for attaining life, each covenant being conditional. "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" (Confession, VII.ii). Fallen man is brought to life by means of the covenant of grace, wherein the Lord "freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ" (VII.iii). The condition of the covenant of grace is stated in these terms: "requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved." The absolute promise of the new heart is made only to the elect: "and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe." Thus the parties in the visible preaching of the covenant of grace are the Lord, and the sinners to whom life is offered, and the parties in the internal covenant are the Lord, and those ordained unto life.

Two sections (sections v and vi) of chapter VII are devoted to the external administration of the covenant at different periods in biblical history. Under the New Testament, the administration of the covenant in the visible church is through the preaching and the sacraments: "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" (VII.vi). In the chapter Of the Church, the church invisible is said to consist of the whole number of the elect. But the church visible is pictured as the place where men are being brought to Christ through the preaching, for it receives from Christ the gift of "the ministry, oracles and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints in this life" (XXV.iii). The church visible where this external ministry takes place is described with the following lofty epithets: "and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation" (XXV.ii).

Our topic is more especially considered in the Larger Catechism, questions 30-36 and 60-68. The Larger Catechism was composed subsequent to the Confession, and it often has been noted that a further maturity of formulation may be observed in the Catechism beyond that found in the Confession. Larger Catechism 30 reads: "God doth not leave all men to perish in the state of sin and misery, into which they fell by the breach of the first covenant, commonly called the covenant of works; but of his mere love and mercy delivereth his elect out of it, and bringeth them into an estate of salvation by the second covenant, commonly called the covenant of grace." Here the covenant of grace is clearly conceived of as the instrument and means by which God delivers his elect out of the estate of sin and misery and introduces them into an estate of salvation.

Questions 31 and 32 name the parties to the covenant. Question 31 introduces the representative headship of Christ over the elect, which is vital to the intertrinitarian covenant of redemption: "With whom was the covenant of grace made? The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed." But if question 31 speaks of the covenant as it pertains to Christ's purchase of covenant blessings for the elect, question 32 goes back to take up the external covenanting made with all in the whole visible church.

In Larger Catechism 32, as in the Confession (VII.iii), God through the covenant offers life and salvation to sinners generally. In accordance with the promise of the Holy Spirit to the elect, God creates in the elect the faith by which they receive the Christ offered in the preaching. "The grace of God is manifested in the second covenant, in that he freely provideth and offereth to sinners a Mediator, and life and salvation by him; and requiring faith as the condition to interest them in him, promiseth and giveth his Holy Spirit to all his elect, to work in them that faith, with all other saving graces; and to enable them unto all holy obedience, as the evidence of the truth of their faith and thankfulness to God, and as the way which he hath appointed them to salvation." Very significantly, the conditionality of the covenant of grace in the preached offer is explicitly stated: "and requiring faith as the condition to interest them in him."

The second series of questions in the Larger Catechism which pertain to our topic has to do with the church visible and invisible, and the offer of grace through the ministry of the Word. Question 60 declares that those who have never heard the gospel cannot be saved. Question 61 identifies those "that hear the gospel" with those who "live in the visible church," and says that not all of these will be saved, "but they only who are true members of the church invisible." Question 63 declares the high privileges of visible professors, and the conditional offers made in the preaching. Moreover, the answer states that it is Christ himself who conditionally offers grace through the ministry of the gospel in the visible church: "What are the special privileges of the visible church? The visible church hath the privilege of being under God's special care and government; of being protected and preserved in all ages, notwithstanding the opposition of all enemies; and of enjoying the communion of saints, the ordinary means of salvation, and offers of grace by Christ to all the members of it in the ministry of the gospel, testifying, that whosoever believes in him shall be saved, and excluding none that will come unto him." Similarly, Shorter Catechism 85 and Larger Catechism 153-155 speak about the means of grace by which Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption.

In Larger Catechism 67, on effectual calling, the elect are said to be made willing and able to answer God's call, "and to accept and embrace the grace offered and conveyed therein." Yet, the external call and offer of grace is made to the reprobate. Larger Catechism 68: "Are the elect only effectually called? All the elect, and they only, are effectually called; although others may be, and often are, outwardly called by the ministry of the word, and have some common operations of the Spirit; who, for their willful neglect and contempt of the grace offered to them, being justly left in their unbelief, do never truly come to Jesus Christ."

To summarize the teaching of the standards, God's covenants with men are means to the end of obtaining life. There are conditions to be fulfilled by men. The condition of the covenant of grace is a faith by which we look to Christ. The covenant of grace is outwardly administered through the ordinances in the visible church. Through preaching, Christ himself offers grace to all in the visible church, including reprobates. Life and salvation under the covenant of grace is offered to sinners generally. Only the elect receive Christ, for only in them does the Holy Spirit create faith. It is striking, but scarcely surprising, that all the primary tenets of the preached covenant taught by Calvin and Rutherford appear in the doctrinal formulations of the Westminster standards.

Contemporary Antinomianism

After surveying Calvin, Rollock and Rutherford, our understanding of what they have said may be sharpened by considering a different perspective. In the twentieth century, Herman Hoeksema (1898-1964), a Dutch American pastor and theological professor for the Protestant Reformed Churches, has radically reconstructed Reformed covenant theology. When we refer to Hoeksema's reconstruction as Antinomianism, we are not indicating a denial that the law of God is a rule of life to inform believers of their duty. Rather, we employ the term used by Rutherford and "Rabbi" Duncan to designate an error opposite to Arminianism: 1) A misconstruction of divine sovereignty as displacing man's responsible agency, so that 2) teaching about human agency is viewed as a concession to moral ability in the unregenerate. 3) The view that "All externals are useless or indifferent, since the Spirit alone gives life."(25)

Unlike the covenant theology of the Westminster standards, which conceives of the covenants as means to bring men to life, Hoeksema argued that covenant could not be a means to an end. Instead, he viewed covenant as the eternal relationship among the persons in the Trinity. Hoeksema condemned concepts of the covenant which centered upon things which would be done in time and in the creation. Even the covenant of redemption, that eternal engagement by the Son to procure salvation for the elect, is deemed unworthy of God. "And he is the God of the covenant, not according to a decree or according to an agreement or pact, but according to his very divine nature and essence."(26) Covenant is said to be a necessary feature of the divine nature, and men enjoy friendship with God by this same covenant life being extended to them in a derivative way.

Hoeksema's concern is that God's sovereignty is jeopardized if covenant did not exist as a necessary feature of the divine nature before it operated with reference to men. Otherwise, man would take precedence over God. Hoeksema insists that God could not enter into covenant with man unless covenant was already part of God's life, and that therefore covenant must be found eternally within the Trinity. He reasons that if everything in creation has its reason in who God is, then it must be that God's covenant with man presupposes an eternal covenant life within the Godhead: "He himself is in his eternal divine covenant life the ultimate and eternal and only reason for all that takes place in time and that exists eternally."(27)

Unhappily, Hoeksema, in defining covenant, does not take his starting point from the Bible's wealth of references to covenant, and the significant place which the Scriptures give to the responsible agency of men in covenant with God. Hoeksema begins rather with the assumption that anything in time, including covenants, must be structured in a way that would not allow a large place to man's agency, or to the means employed in the creation, lest this would threaten divine sovereignty. However, it needs to be asked whether Scripture itself says anything at all to the effect that covenant belongs to the nature and essence of the Godhead. In fact, Hoeksema lays aside the extensive biblical teaching about human agency in connection with God's covenant, in order to bring the covenant concept into line with his unwarranted speculation about an eternal covenant life in God. The Westminster standards, on the other hand, give due place to the requirements and conditions laid upon men in the covenants, while also displaying the harmony of human agency with biblical teaching about divine sovereignty.

Central in Hoeksema's doctrine of the covenant is his insistence that covenant cannot be a means to an end in history, a way to reach salvation. Instead, the covenant is itself the end, the enjoyment of communion with God. He rejects the idea that the covenant "is the way along which the salvation of the elect is established."(28) Whereas the Westminster standards teach that there is an administration of the covenant through the means of grace, in order to draw men into the kingdom or to interest them in Christ, Hoeksema will have none of this: "The covenant also is not a way to a certain end, is no means to the attainment of a certain purpose, is not the manner wherein we are saved. It is itself the highest purpose, the end, the eternal bliss, unto which all things tend and must tend."(29) Hoeksema wants to avoid relating the covenant to man's agency in an historical process, as if this would abridge divine sovereignty.

Hoeksema pursues his reconstruction of Reformed covenant theology by condemning the covenant of works formulation. The covenant of works speaks of placing Adam on probation, and of a promise which held out the prospect of life. Hoeksema objects that this makes the covenant a means for attaining something higher than Adam had before. Hoeksema has another explanation of the communion which Adam enjoyed with God at creation. Hoeksema says that Adam walked in the covenant life which had already existed in the life of the Godhead. This, Hoeksema believes, will give the proper priority to God. Hoeksema rejects the teaching in the Westminster standards (as in Shorter Catechism 12) that the covenant of works was entered into subsequent to creation, as a special act of providence. Hoeksema protests that this would make the covenant incidental, brought in to secure for Adam something he did not already possess, thereby reducing the covenant to a means to an end.

Hoeksema goes on to say that there has always been only one covenant, not a covenant of works and later a covenant of grace. The covenant under which unfallen Adam enjoyed friendship with God is the same covenant into which the Lord brings sinners today when he gives them communion with himself. The covenant of redemption is likewise discarded, because even this covenant between the Father and Son, entered into from eternity, would bring the covenant life into subservience to the accomplishment of salvation, and it cannot be that the covenant life in God could be a subordinate conception, or a means even to such an end as the accomplishment and application of redemption.

This resistance to an historical means to an end must also be applied to preaching. This is the context for Hoeksema's opposition to the free offer of the gospel. Hoeksema's criticism goes to the foundation of the Westminster doctrine of the free offer of the gospel. His opposition is based on his notion that the covenant can only be the actual possession of communion with God, and has no aspect as a means to bring us into that communion. Hoeksema says that if the call made through preaching is regarded as a means to bring sinners to Christ, the significant role accorded to human agency would mean that we concede moral ability to the unregenerate. It would lead to Pelagianism and Arminianism. "We are so easily tempted to confuse the calling as a step on the way to salvation with the preaching of the gospel as it is proclaimed by men. The calling as a work of salvation in that case becomes general, comes on the part of God to all men, and is gradually changed into an offer, well-meaning on the part of God, to all men, the acceptance of which depends on the free will of man. And thus we come on the track of Pelagius and Arminius."(30)

Clearly Hoeksema has a different definition from that of the Westminster standards as to what constitutes Arminianism. In this connection, Hoeksema is careful to quote the Westminster Confession as representing that concept of covenant which is contrary to his theology: "It also speaks of the covenant of grace as a second covenant, 'wherein he freely offered unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved.' Here, then," Hoeksema writes, "we meet with the notion that the covenant is something additional and secondary, a means to an end, a way of life, a device unto salvation."(31)

In contrast to the Westminster doctrine that there is an outward calling in which salvation is offered to sinners generally, (Larger Catechism 68), Hoeksema seeks to cut off any concept of preaching as a general offer, by defining external calling as something applicable only to the elect.(32) He follows the very error which Rutherford identified as characteristic of the Antinomians and Anabaptists of his day: they speak only of the internal covenant made with the elect, and will not acknowledge an outward administration of the covenant. Though the Westminster standards appreciate the privileges of participation in the visible church as a means leading to salvation (Larger Catechism 63), Hoeksema protests that preaching is not useful until regeneration has taken place. Thus he says that the means of grace must "presuppose life" in the hearers. "It is only the living that can possibly use means."(33)

Rather than preaching being a means to bring men to salvation, Hoeksema regards it as more appropriate to speak of regeneration coming before preaching, in the case of elect children born in the church. Hoeksema reasons that it must be that elect children of the covenant are regenerated in infancy, so that they will be able to profit from sitting under the preaching when they reach years of understanding. The function of preaching in their case is to develop the new life that is already in them. If they were not already regenerate, the preaching would do them no good. "What possible reason can there be, if God is able to regenerate some children, why he should wait in the case of others until they can understand the preaching of the word to implant in them the seed of regeneration?"(34) "It is especially for this reason that according to our conviction children of the covenant are regenerated from earliest infancy. Why should God according to the rule of the covenant bring little children under the influence of the preaching of the word from their earliest infancy if they were not regenerated? The dead certainly cannot use means, and there is no proper reaction upon the preaching of the word by those that are spiritually dead. Only those that are living are capable to use the means which the Holy Spirit provides for the working of faith and for the development and upbuilding of that faith."(35)

Hoeksema's presumption that elect children in the church are regenerated in infancy is based on precisely the same premise as his opposition to the free offer of the gospel. In both cases, he considers that "It is only the living that can possibly use means."(36) Preaching is not to be regarded as a means to salvation, and therefore the covenant children must have been regenerated before they were able to understand the preaching. Likewise, there could not be an offer of life and of salvation to sinners generally through a preached covenant, because this would imply that spiritually dead sinners were able to respond. This is the premise from which Hoeksema opposes the free offer of the gospel as Arminianism, and from which he dismisses evangelistic preaching to covenant children.

Hoeksema's variance with the Westminster standards may be seen on many points of doctrine. But more than disagreement on a number of individual points, there is a systemic contrast. His opposition to the free offer is not incidental to his theology, but belongs to his wide-ranging reconstruction of covenant theology. Even Presbyterian churches which do not require that their officers subscribe to all the doctrines of the Westminster standards, but only to a system of doctrine, should note that Hoeksema's opposition to traditional covenant theology is systemic. His opposition to the Puritan doctrine of the free offer of the gospel is integral to his alternative system of theology. Moreover, as we have seen, Hoeksema is self-conscious in his identification of the Westminster standards as containing the covenant theology he opposes.

What importance does the free offer have in the Westminster standards? The free offer is the biblical method of presenting the gospel to sinners generally, pointing them to Christ the Mediator, and assuring them that the offer of life and salvation will be fulfilled in them if they rest upon Christ. Christ himself, through his ambassadors, sincerely offers life and salvation to sinners, including the reprobate, upon condition that they believe on him. God never intends the salvation of the reprobate. Never is there a frustrated divine decree. Never do the unregenerate have the moral ability to respond. Sincere offers are means God uses to bring sinners to Christ, but the preached offers belong to God's preceptive will, not to his decree.

Hoeksema's protest against viewing covenant as the means to an end reflects his concern lest human agency jeopardize divine sovereignty. This is the reason for Hoeksema's rejection of conditionality in the covenant in any sense. Larger Catechism 32 speaks of the response God requires in the covenant, when faith is said to be the condition to interest sinners in Christ. But Hoeksema regards conditions as a subversion of God's sovereignty. Likewise, Hoeksema denies that men are parties with God in the covenant. Hoeksema says that there is only one party in the covenant, namely God, and man is brought in under God's side! We remember that Hoeksema claimed that covenant exists in the very nature of God. The genius of this speculation is that it cuts out all occasion for man to appear as a party in the covenant, because the covenant existed before man was ever introduced, and hence human activity is not allowed to compete with divine sovereignty: "The revelation of God's eternal covenant life must be the highest purpose, must never be a means to an end."(37)

However, as "Rabbi" Duncan once pointed out, we are on the wrong track when we think of God's activity and man's responsible activity in competition with one another in history. Duncan indicated the sounder and more helpful way: "Antinomianism says that we (to use the words of Towne) are Christ-ed and God-ed. Arminianism says that half of the work is God's and half is man's. Calvinism asserts that the whole is God's, and the whole is man's also. The second scheme robs God; the first fantacises man; the third is the juste milieu, and stands midway between two ultras."(38) That is, Antinomianism exalts God's sovereignty by displacing man's responsible agency, and Arminianism excludes God's sovereignty in salvation. Thus, says Duncan, "That God works half, and man the other half, is false; that God works all, and man does all, is true."(39)

We note the contrast with Hoeksema, writing in The Standard Bearer: "I always say, beloved: Give me God, if I must make a choice. If I must make a choice to lose God or man, give me God. Let me lose man. It's all right to me: no danger there. Give me God! That's Reformed!"(40) However, we certainly are in trouble if we lose the biblical teaching about man's responsible agency and the means God uses to bring men into communion with himself. This would not be Reformed in the sense of Westminster theology. Jonathan Edwards expresses the balance in the standard Reformed perspective: "That election is not from a foresight of works, or conditional, as depending on the condition of man's will, is evident by II Tim. 1:9, Phil. 2:13, Rom. 9:15-16. Men's labours and endeavours themselves are from God, I Cor. 15:10."(41)

To conclude, let us hear Calvin expounding God's offer to bestow the blessings of the covenant: "But now, seeing it hath pleased him of his infinite goodness to come as it were to a common treaty and to bind himself interchangeably unto us, whereas there is no cause why he should be bound, so as he covenanteth to be our father and savior and to receive us into his flock, to be his inheritance, that we may live under his protection, and he setteth the everlasting life before us, seeing he doth all these things for us, ought not our hearts to yield, though they were of stone? Seeing that the creatures do see that the living God abaseth himself so far as to vouchsafe to enter into treaty with them, as if he should say, Go to, let us see at what point we be. Indeed there is an infinite distance betwixt you and me. I might command you what I think good without having any further to do with you, neither are you worthy to come by me, or to have any acquaintance with him that can command you what he listeth, without making any other protestation than only this, This will I have ye do, this is my mind. And yet for all that, I forbear mine own right, I offer myself to you to be your leader and savior, I am willing to govern you, and you shall be as my little household. I will be your king, if you will be contented with my word. And beside this, think not that my making of my covenant with your fathers was of purpose to gain anything at your hands, for I have no need nor want of any thing, and if I had, what could ye do for me? But I seek your welfare and your salvation, and therefore I am here, ready to enter into covenant with you, and to bind myself to you for mine own part. Seeing that the living God stoopeth so low, I pray you must we not needs be too too unthankful, if we yield not to humble ourselves under him, and forbear all pride and stateliness? . . . And if this took place in the time of the law, there is much greater reason that it should take place at this day. For our Lord's covenanting was not only with the Jews, nor for that one time only. . . . Therefore when we feel any naughtiness in us that keepeth us back from serving God, if we find any slothfulness in us, if we be fallen too fast asleep in this world, then to waken us up, and to cause us to magnify God, let us call to mind the covenant which our Lord hath made with us."(42)

Notes
(1) Robert Rollock, Select Works, ed. William M. Gunn (Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1844-49), 1:40.
(2) Rollock, Select Works, 1:269-71.
(3) John Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy (1583, reprint ed., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), p. 439.
(4) John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1879), 2:210.
(5) Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy, p. 317, commenting on Deut. 7:9.
(6) Samuel Rutherford, The Covenant of Life Opened (Edinburgh: Andro Anderson for Robert Brown, 1655), p. 79.
(7) Ibid., p. 90.
(8) Ibid., pp. 87-88.
(9) Ibid., pp. 107-08.
(10) Ibid., p. 84.
(11) Ibid., pp. 77-78.
(12) Ibid., p. 340.
(13) Ibid., p. 107.
(14) Ibid., p. 94.
(15) Ibid., p. 108.
(16) Ibid., pp. 92-93.
(17) Ibid., p. 340.
(18) Ibid.
(19) Ibid., p. 341.
(20) Ibid., p. 309.
(21) William Knight, Colloquia Peripatetica, fifth ed., enlarged (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1879), pp. 164-65.
(22) Rutherford, Covenant of Life, pp. 344-45.
(23) Ibid., pp. 308-09.
(24) Ibid., p. 314.
(25) William Young, "Antinomianism," in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 1, ed. Edwin H. Palmer, (Wilmington, Delaware: National Foundation for Christian Education, 1964), p. 272.
(26) Herman Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1966), p. 319. We may note in passing that Hoeksema gave another reason for condemning the concept of a covenant of redemption between God the Son according to his divine nature and God the Father. He considered that the classic Reformed concept amounted to an undue subordination within the Trinity, endangering the Son's equality of nature with the Father. These grounds for rejecting the concept of a covenant of redemption were already well answered: Rutherford, Covenant of Life, pp. 303, 310-11; John Owen, "Federal Transactions Between the Father and the Son," in An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1854-55), 2:86-87; Hugh Martin, The Atonement: In Its Relations to the Covenant, the Priesthood, the Intercession of our Lord (1870, reprint ed., Edinburgh: Knox Press, 1976), pp. 44-45.
(27) Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 297.
(28) Ibid., p. 318.
(29) Ibid., p. 322.
(30) Ibid., p. 471.
(31) Herman Hoeksema, The Covenant: God's Tabernacle With Men (Grand Rapids: Sunday School of the First Protestant Reformed Church, 1981), p. 2.
(32) Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 476.
(33) Ibid., p. 651.
(34) Ibid.
(35) Ibid., p. 653.
(36) Ibid., p. 651.
(37) Ibid., p. 297.
(38) Knight, Colloquia Peripatetica, 29-30.
(39) Ibid.
(40) The Standard Bearer, 29:415.
(41) Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman (1834, reprint ed., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 2:534, para. 29.
(42) Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy, pp. 179-80.