Dr. Fesko is an Adjunct Professor of Theology at RTS, Atlanta, and is serving on a study commission of the OPC, a group tasked check out the federal vision. He recently released a paper toward that end, entitled “The Federal Vision and the Covenant of Works.” To that paper, I offer a few comments.
The first comment belongs in the “talking past one another” department. Dr. Fesko says, “The traditional view posits Adam in a covenantal relationship that is conditioned by obedience in order to obtain eternal life. The federal vision, on the other hand, sees Adam in a covenantal relationship that is conditioned by a need for maturity . . .” Well, okay thus far. But how would that maturity be reached? By personal and perpetual obedience, that’s how. The issue we have with the covenant of works is not on the need for obedience. It is whether or not that obedience is necessarily related to something else called merit.
For a second example, Dr. Fesko says, “We must ask, however, where in the Scriptures do we see a covenant defined only as a relationship. While relationships certainly take place within the context of a covenant, we must recognize that Scripture sees a covenant primarily as an agreement.”
This is the kind of unnecessary disagreement that is just exasperating. We do have substantive disagreements, and we should be discussing them. But this is not one of them. To say that Scripture sees a covenant primarily as an agreement, setting it in opposition to seeing covenant as relationship, is simply missing what an agreement is. An agreement is an agreement between persons. It is a relationship. An agreement is an agreed upon relation.
A lease agreement form sitting on the shelf of a stationery store is just a form. It is not an agreement until persons make the agreement.