For creatures, there is no such thing as a “view from everywhere,” and this is especially true in theology. One of the problems that happens with people who do decretal theology all the time is that this can be forgotten, and we begin to assume that we do have the ultimate vantage point for our theological perspective. And so when someone says that it would be edifying to look at election through the lens of the covenant, and not just to look at the covenant through the lens of election, this is taken as an incipient denial of both election and the covenant.
But when something is much bigger than we are, we have to look at it from different angles. And when I walk around to the back of the mansion to have a look at the gardens there, I am not denying what I saw when I was looking at the front. Decretal Calvinism is true, and its towers are imposing. But the truths of Scripture can be looked at from other angles, without forgetting or denying or contradicting what we saw when considering the decrees.
The same issue of “vantage point” can help us when considering the issues of recapitulation. The apostle Paul was fond of the reductio, stepping into the assumptions of his opponents and reasoning from there. “Come now, you who depend on the law . . .” This is what I believe he is doing when he is talking about the two covenants, one with Hagar and one with Sarah. We most emphatically have two covenants, which is what the recapitulationists are arguing for. But this covenant of Hagar’s, was it something we ought to look at from the vantage of a divine offer, or from the vantage of inevitable human self-righteousness? I opt for the latter. I don’t believe that God made a serious “covenant of works” with Hagar, knowing that she and her descendants would not be able to keep it. But if He didn’t make a covenant of works with Hagar, then how did she wind up in a covenant of works? I do agree that her spiritual descendants were in a covenant of works. How did they get there?
I would argue that the works principle is the only alternative to the grace principle, and when people break the covenant of grace, their only option to is function, somehow and someway, on a works basis. There is nowhere else to go. No one has to teach this — it is just the way it is. God made a covenant of grace with His people (and that is all it was), and yet the covenant of grace can be rejected and broken by the non-elect within that covenant. When descendants of Sarah rejected the covenant of grace (taking pride in their own “achievments”), this made them covenantal Ishmaelites.
Put this another way. The covenant of grace was made with visible Israel in the Old Testament, and the covenant of grace is with the visible Church in the New. Because the covenant is not limited to the decretally elect, it is possible for the covenant of grace to be broken by those in the midst of the covenant people who are not elect.
(Special reminder for theological scholars: for the elect, everything the Westminster Confession says about them, and five pounds extra to be sure, is true.)
But the non-elect reject God’s grace. That is the distinguishing mark of the non-elect; they cannot live by grace through faith. But they are surrounded with the apparatus of grace — Word, sacraments, promises, fellowship, and so on. Grace is everywhere — except in their hearts. So what they do (and they always do it) is construct a covenant of works out of the materials around them. This is the high rebellion of reverse engineering. This is why people can come to the Lord’s Table as though they were doing a good work, or they sign a card at the revival, or they memorize the Shorter Catechism. They can take pride in a confession of unworthiness. Who among us has not known a Calvinist who was proud of his knowledge that creatures cannot take pride in anything?
All this is contrary to the design of the covenant of grace, but the works-heart can turn absolutely anything into a work. I was talking to someone once about the famous question posed at the Pearly Gates, “Why should I let you into heaven?” And I said the answer was something like, “Because of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, plus nothing.” The person confessed to me that her first reaction was, “Gee, I hope I remember to say that.”