The next chapter in By Faith Alone is entitled “Covenant, Inheritance, and Typology,” and is co-authored by R. Fowler White and Cal Beisner. Their argument is ingenious, intricate, and, I believe, entirely unsatisfactory. What they are seeking to do is understand the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, and the covenant of grace in their archetypal, typical, and antitypical relations. The end result is very complicated, but some of their basic assumptions are easy to identify and answer. And because this is an architectonic project, when those foundational assumptions are addressed, the larger argument is addressed also.
The first is that they insist that grace must be defined as demerited favor. This, in contrast to the preferred understanding in FV circles, where grace is understood as unmerited favor. White and Beisner say this:
“The term grace presupposes the state of sin and demerit brought about by the fall . . . Grace is favor in the presence of demerit of negative desert, that is, in the presence of the transgression of righteous requirements. Thus, to teach that the Adamic covenant did not differ in substance or principle from the covenant of grace is to compromise the Scriptural doctrine of grace” (p. 164).
There are a couple responses to this that are necessary. The first is that the scriptural doctrine of grace would have to include scriptural uses of the word grace (charis), would it not? “And the child [Jesus] grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40). This does not eliminate the legitimate possibility of using the word grace in certain theological circles to refer to demerited favor only. Fine. But surely it should be recognized by those doing this that other theological circles might have reasonable scriptural grounds for seeing it as unearned or unmerited favor? Without being told that they are compromising the scriptural doctrine of grace because they give it the same lexical range that Luke did?
The second is that White and Beisner need to acknowledge here (which they do not) that the idea that God’s graciousness was foundational to the covenant with Adam in the garden is a common, historic view among the Reformed. Since they are writing to defend the Reformed faith against “redefinition” (p. 147), it would seem particularly important for them to note that their insistence on raw merit as a settled consensus among the Reformed is itself a fine example of redefintion. Numerous Reformed theologians, from the Reformation down to the present, have seen God’s covenantal dealings with Adam as essentially gracious. It would be tedious to list them all, but I can if I need to.
Next, White and Beisner argue this:
“The Mosaic covenant was a republication of the covenant of works modified to be compatible with the covenant of grace. Specifically, the covenant of works was modified in the Mosaic covenant by limiting the application of the principle of personal merit to the retention (vis-a-vis reception) of earthly and temporal (i.e. typological) blessings by Israel and their king” (p. 167).
This is actually a strange amalgam of covenant theology and dispensationalism. In dispensationalism, the Jews are God’s earthly people, and the Church is made up of God’s heavenly people. White and Beisner have a more layered and nuanced view, and to do this they argue that the Mosaic covenant (as type) is part of the covenant of grace, but also that it was a recapitulation (as antitype) of the broken covenant with Adam in the garden.
But to see the move from old covenant to new as a move from earth to heaven is problematic on a number of levels. At the same time, there are many issues and as many texts to work through. Whatever it is, the relationship between Israel and the Church is not a simple one. The pull of dispensationalism is powerful for a reason. In my view, the Lutheran take on this is similar to the dispensational one, and again, this is not intended as a slam. There are reasons for it. White and Beisner want to see limited earthly blessings in the Old Testament, apportioned on a principle of works. But they want all matters of salvation, however, in both Old and New Testaments, to be by faith alone. This desire to maintain the perimeter around our enclave of all salvific grace motivates Lutherans and dispensationalists as well. Whether it is seen as special pleading, or as what happens when you are painted into a theological corner, it is still understandable. Given that the subject is difficult enough, it is unfortunate that White and Beisner ramp up the stakes in their conclusion, by saying that their opponents hold to “no gospel at all” (p. 170). Now, how can that be helpful?
I do not see works as the principle whereby Jews maintained their earthly privileges. I see salvation (in the heavenly sense) as being appropriated by evangelical faith alone, plus nothing. At the same time, I also see a faithful Jew appropriating earthly blessings by that same kind of evangelical faith alone, plus nothing. Without living and real faith, God hates everything we do. The first commandment with a promise was given to the Jews at Sinai, that it might go well with them in the land the Lord their God was giving them. Earthly blessing, right? But Paul takes that same promise and applies it to a bunch of Gentile kids in Ephesus. How were they to appropriate the promise, that it might go well with them in the earth? In chapter six of Ephesians they were called upon to remember chapter two of Ephesians. They were to appropriate this blessing the same way the Jews in the Older Testament were to appropriate all their blessings — by grace through faith, lest anyone should boast.
How am I put right with God? By grace through faith. How do I earn money to feed my family? By grace through faith. How do I keep the weeds down on my three acres? By grace through faith. How do I see answered prayers? By grace through faith. There is nothing whatever that any obedient creature can ever do, in this world or in any other, in this generation or any other, in this covenant or any other, that is not done by efficacious grace appropriated by living faith. Ever. Period. For this doctrine of mine, I am sometimes accused of trying to undermine the doctrine of sola fide, which I don’t quite understand either.
And last, to see the covenant with Adam as essentially gracious does not require us to then say that the Adamic covenant does “not differ in substance or principle from the covenant of grace.” This is a non sequitur. The latter does not follow from the former. Let me pick on my colleague Doug Jones, who is a swell guy. If, in his swell-guyness, he offers a book contract to someone who sends in a manuscript to Canon Press, and also, equally in his swell-guyness, he resolves a dispute with a neighbor over that neighbor’s dog barking endlessly at midnight, it does not follow from this that the manuscipt was written by the guy with the barking dog. God’s graciousness to His creatures is a given. This does not drive or predetermine the stipulated requirements of any covenant He might make with those creatures. It does not require that all His covenants must amount to the same covenant. It just means that any of the covenants He makes must be consistent with that gracious character.
In this chapter, White and Beisner argue that the covenant of redemption (as they explain it, between Father, Son, and Spirit) is archetypal of the covenant of works between God and Adam.
“This covenant of redemption, being pre-creational, preceded and was archetypal of the covenant of works between God and Adam” (p. 150).
This (broken) covenant of works was then a type of the coming (unbroken) covenant of grace. This is the pattern they are following: archetype, type, antitype. The way they are arguing here is almost a mirror image of the way Ralph Smith argues in his book The Eternal Covenant. The ultimate reality (for both sides) is the intra-Trinitarian covenant before all worlds. But Smith sees that relation as being one of covenantal love. White and Beisner see it in terms of strict covenantal merit.
“The Father and the Son being equally God, it is proper to posit strict merit between them, and that is the case in the covenant of redemption . . . The similarity between the two is that God (in the covenant of redemption, the Father toward the Son; in the covenant of works, the Trinity toward Adam) binds himself by his justice to reward a certain performance” (p. 150).
There is no way to argue this point without making it personal, but I do not intend it to be personal here in any kind of ad hom sense. I take it as a fixed biblical reality that you become more and more like the God you worship. Idolaters become like the idols they worship (Ps. 115), and Christians who behold the glory of God in the face of Christ become more and more like Him. We are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. When we finally see Him we will become like Him because we are going to see Him as He is. Now the good news is that all of us — White, Beisner, Clark, Waters, Lusk, Leithart, and even me — are worshipping the same God. When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to laugh about this particular tangle we’ve gotten ourselves into. We will also laugh about how much better Heaven is than Ft. Lauderdale.
At the same time, our conceptions of God still matter now. For example, many Arminians know and love the Lord, but their doctrinal formulations of what He is like still affects what they do here and now. If a doctrine is false, then true Christians can find themselves pursuing false ideals of sanctification in the name of the true God. All this to say, the idea of strict book-keeping transactions of merit at the ultimate level between the persons of the Trinity is an idea that is sure to affect how we deal with one another down here, and not positively. Ironically, the template of raw justice being applied by some to fellow ministers in the Reformed faith has led to a great deal of raw injustice. And lest this point be seen as a self-serving observation, let me apply it this way. Let me urge all my brothers on the FV side of things to layer grace upon grace in our dealings with those who allege we are denying, undermining and attacking the gospel that we would actually die for. Well, if that is the case, here’s the opportunity. Let’s die for it now.