The doctrine of the covenant, in the words of Anthony Hoekema, is “the vertebrate structure which holds all the doctrines of Reformed theology together.”[1] The structural importance of the covenant for Reformed theology has given rise to areas of dispute and controversy. From one viewpoint this is healthy as it reflects the present desire for the refinement and advancement of such a vital doctrine. Some of the most heated questions of our day are case in point: Was Adam in a covenant relationship with God before the fall? Is the Mosaic Law in some sense a republication of the covenant of works? What is the relationship between election and the covenant of grace? How should the recent teachings of Federal Vision on justification and covenant membership be evaluated?

These questions have flowed like magma, but Cornelis Venema, with Bavinck-like fairness and sagacity, handles them like cooled off igneous rock in his recent publication, Christ and Covenant Theology: Essays on Election, Republication, and the Covenants (amazon; wtsbooks). Venema is president of Mid-America Reformed Seminary, where he is also professor of doctrinal studies. In this volume he brings his last two decades of study and writing to bear on these crucial issues, demonstrating himself to be a Reformed theologian of the highest order. In fact, Richard B. Gaffin Jr., endorsed the book, saying, “No one today is better qualified to address the perennially important issues of covenant theology than Cornel Venema.”

Christ: The Center of Covenant Theology

Following a helpful forward by Sinclair Ferguson, there is a concise introduction in which the importance of the doctrine of the covenant and its central relationship to Christ is elucidated. “The burden of my argument throughout,” writes Venema, “is that Christ, and Christ alone, is always the One through whom God’s gracious intention to enjoy fellowship with his people finds its beginning and end” (xxiv). This is a consistent note that Venema strikes often and strikes well throughout this work. The covenant is not an abstraction, nor is it an impersonal contract or merely an impetus for divisiveness; rather, it furnishes the possibility of true religion for it has as its substance the personal and real fellowship of man and the triune God. The central, driving promise of the biblical drama, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” is consummated and enjoyed in Christ alone. In him all the promises of God find their Yes and Amen (2 Cor. 1:20). In him we have the sure hope of a new creation in which the eternal dwelling place of God is with man (Rev. 21:3).

Following the introduction, the book is divided into three major parts: (1) The Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace; (2) Covenant and Election; and (3) Covenant Theology in Recent Discussion. I’ll simply summarize some of Venema’s conclusions with the hope that you will read the book for yourself to get his careful argumentation and exegesis.

Part 1: The Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace

Part 1 consists of three essays honing in on the bi-covenantalism codified in the Westminster Confession of Faith. By this time in the historical development of covenant theology, a distinction was formed between a prefall covenant of works and a postfall covenant of grace. Venema then goes on to argue at length that the view that the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace included a republication of the covenant of works in some sense was a minority position in the orthodox period. He primarily engages the essays found in The Law is Not of Faith, being critical of their conclusions, while also recognizing the diversity and difficulty of the topic (see esp. pp. 139-44). His discussion of the typology in the Mosaic covenant was especially informative as he expounds various insights from Geerhardus Vos, Meredith Kline and O. Palmer Robertson. He writes regarding the obedience required of Israel,

“Consistent with the pattern of biblical typology, the promises and demands of the Mosaic economy are ‘typical’ of the promises and demands of the new covenant economy. The redemption promised in the covenant of grace always requires the response of faith and sincere, albeit imperfect, obedience on the part of the people of the covenant. As it was in the covenant administration of Moses, so it is in the covenant administration of Christ” (129).

Part 2: Covenant and Election

In Part 2 Venema takes up the relationship between covenant and election. It was previously understood that election supplied Reformed theology in the orthodox period with a kind of organizing principle. As such it injected both abstraction and austerity into the entire Reformed system of doctrine. Accordingly, a unilateral (or monopleuric) formulation of the covenant based on election arose, which diminished its mutuality and conditionality. However, another formulation arose which gave greater emphasis to the history and mutuality of the covenant relationship between God and his people. After expounding the covenant theology of Herman Bavinck, Venema concludes, relating the covenant of redemption and the historical covenant of grace,

“Since the covenant of redemption is a pretemporal compact in which the triune God arranges the covenantal means to secure the salvation of the elect, there is an intimate and necessary connection between these doctrines. In broad terms, the covenant is the divinely-appointed instrument whereby the triune God achieves his saving purposes in time and history. If election is the doctrine that describes God’s sovereign and gracious purpose to redeem his people in Christ, then covenant is the doctrine that describes God’s chosen means to accomplish this purpose in time. Just as God displays his mercy and justice in his eternal decree to save the elect in Christ and to leave others in their sins, so God displays his steadfast faithfulness and intra-Trinitarian communion in his covenantal administration of the history of redemption” (182-83).

Venema also considers in Part 2 the pastoral implications of the relationship between covenant and election for parents who lose their child in infancy as it is stated in the Canons of Dort 1.17,

“Since we are to judge of the will of God from His Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace, in which they together with the parents are comprehended, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom it pleases God to call out of this life in their infancy (Gen. 17:7; Acts 2:39; 1 Cor. 7:14).”

For more on the Canons of Dort, see Venema’s book But For the Grace of God: An Exposition of the Canons of Dort.

Part 3: Covenant Theology in Recent Discussion

In the final part, Venema summarizes and assesses what has come to be termed “Federal Vision.” His assessment focuses on whether or not the views purported by the Federal Vision camp agree with the Three Forms of Unity (i.e., Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession and Canons of Dort). He concludes that Federal Vision is as much at odds with the Three Forms as it is with the Westminster Standards. He also draws out the ways in which this new teaching compromises the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Christ’s work alone, with a particular engagement with N. T. Wright and Romans 5:12-21.

Recommendation

I would especially recommend this book to pastors, scholars, and interested church members because of its relevance for many contemporary issues. However, anyone willing to follow Venema in his deft articulation of the covenant will be the better for it. With clarity and exactness, Venema leads you into the swirling waters of these covenant debates and proves a helpful and trustworthy guide. And while we can get so fixated on the swirls, Venema brings us beyond to enjoy the everlasting ocean of covenantal fellowship in Christ with the triune God in whose presence there is fullness of joy and at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore.

You can purchase the book here.

[1] Anthony Hoekema, Herman Bavinck’s Doctrine of the Covenant, 360.

In a previous post, we considered the way in which Geerhardus Vos’ doctrine of Christ impacted his redemptive-historical hermeneutic for reading the Old Testament. In the triune God’s eternal counsel of peace, the Son assumed his role as Mediator and Surety of the covenant of grace. Therefore, the Old Testament revelation that had him as its center and goal was never of him as the Logos in the abstract, but always as the Logos to be incarnate in time. For this reason the Old Testament revelation with its types had to point forward to Christ as the antitype. And not only did it point forward to the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4), but also heavenward. For the prophets, priests and kings were messengers and representatives of the great antitype, the eternal Son of God anointed as Mediator from eternity. “They derived their official authority from the person Himself whom they as office bearers proclaimed in a shadowy fashion” (Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:90). This means that believers under the old covenant were not saved “otherwise than by the official activity of the Messiah” (90).

Building on this, we notice a further integration that Vos develops with Christology and Covenant: he grounds the stability and certainty of the covenant of grace in the hypostatic union. By this union we affirm that the divine person (the Logos) assumed a human nature. It was not the union of a divine person and a human person, but the union of the divine nature and a human nature in the divine person of the Logos. In possession of both a true humanity and true divinity, he was fully God and fully man, the God-man. This person, and no other, is the Mediator and Surety of the covenant of grace.

The question, then, is what impact does Christ being a divine person, the God-man, have on the covenant of grace? Or, how does the covenant of grace differ from the covenant of works by having Christ as its Mediator? While the church has always affirmed and defended the necessity of Christ being both truly God and truly man (see e.g., Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 6), the implications are sometimes left unturned.

Vos will argue that the covenant of grace derives its certainty not in the abstract, but from the person of its Mediator.

Only because the divine person is the subject in Christ does His mediatorial work obtain the stability required by an eternal, immutable covenant of grace. We now know, however, that this human nature in itself is an abstraction that did not exist for a moment without personal subsistence in the Logos (48).

Note, first, the careful distinction Vos makes between person and nature. He is not saying that the attribute of immutability that belonged to the divine nature was communicated to the human nature.[1] The divine nature remains divine and the human nature remains human. The unity of the two natures lies solely in the divine person of the Logos (see p. 42).[2] Again, the Logos did not assume a human person but a human nature. On this basis, Vos can write, “[I]n Christ’s human nature there was not a mutable human person but the person of the Son of God. Will or intellect or emotion in the human nature could not have sinned unless the underlying person had fallen from a state of moral rectitude. There can naturally be no thought of the latter for the Mediator, considering the deity of His person” (58).

Second, note how Vos understands the covenant of grace as eternal and immutable to require a certain kind of mediatorial work, namely one that is stable. Where does this stability come from? Vos says it comes from the Mediator being a divine person; particularly, from the human nature subsisting in the Logos, the second person of the Trinity. “The human nature of the Mediator did not exist for an instant apart from the person of the Son” (62). In short, the immutable nature of the covenant of grace required the assumption of a human nature by none other than an immutable divine person.

So Vos goes on to say,

Thus the person of the Logos with its personality provides His human nature with the steadfastness and immutability by which the covenant of grace is distinguished from the first covenant, the covenant of works. The oneness and the deity of the person are of importance for the affirmation that Christ could not sin (48).

The impeccability of Christ that stabilizes the covenant of grace in its immutability is not owing to the deification of his humanity, but from the fact that his humanity subsists in a divine person. The covenant of works did not possess such stability because it did not have the God-man as its mediator. So while the covenant of works could be broken, the covenant of grace is indestructible.

The practical import of all this is that the immutable and guaranteed nature of the covenant of grace is given a concrete and real ground in the person of Christ himself. We do not affirm the certainty of God’s covenant in the abstract, but on the basis of who Christ is as its Mediator and Surety. The promise of God in the covenant of grace to be our God and for us to be his people is as unbreakable as the unity of the two natures in the divine person of the Logos. His two natures would first have to be ripped apart before the threads of God’s promise could be unravelled. The covenant of grace, in which we find the complete forgiveness of ours sins and eschatological fellowship with the triune God forever, is founded upon nothing less than divine omnipotence. So in Christ we can be absolutely sure that all of God’s promises are, in fact, Yes and Amen.

[1] For Vos’ critique of Lutheran Christology with respect to the communication of attributes see pp. 65-74, esp. 70ff.

[2] Vos asks, “Is this one subject, this one person in the Mediator, a divine or a human person?” He answers, “This person is divine, and not human or divine-human. In order to be immediately convinced of this, one may take the following into consideration. In the Logos, a divine person, who is immutable, is present from eternity. If now there can be but one person in the Mediator, and the divine person cannot be eradicated or changed, then it is self-evident that this one person is the divine person of the Logos. One can only maintain the immutability of God if one holds to the deity of the person in the Mediator. The choice lies between two persons or one divine person” (42).