All theology is theology proper. Talk about creation or covenant, Israel or incarnation, justification or final judgment is talk about the Creator, the covenant Lord, the God of Jacob, the Son who takes flesh, the God who justifies and judges. Theologians can’t not talk about God, and one test - perhaps the supreme test - of everything we say is whether it honors the Lord we serve.
It is therefore refreshing to see Cal Beisner and Fowler White attempting to defend a meritorious covenant of works on the basis of the doctrine of God. Putting this issue into the realm of theology proper clarifies a number of the issues surrounding this doctrine, and also, interestingly, exposes important divergences among the defenders of the doctrine. To my mind, it exposes some of the real - I would say insurmountable - problems of a meritorious idea of the covenant of works.
In the recent book, By Faith Alone , Beisner and White write:
“The suprahistorical (eternal) covenant of redemption (e.g., John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38–40; Heb. 7:20–22, 28; 8:6; 10:7), which was established among God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, incorporated two contrasting but compatible principles of inheritance, one for the Son, the other for his elect seed. On the one hand, the everlasting inheritance of all things was promised and would be rendered to the Son (Heb. 1:2) as personally merited by his obedience to his Father’s will. On the other hand, the everlasting inheritance would also be rendered to the Son’s elect seed (Isa. 53:10) as vicariously (representatively) merited for them by the Son’s obedience and unilaterally imputed to them through faith in him. The Son was thus to obey his Father’s will and thereby become the Heir of all things, including an innumerable seed who would become co-heirs with him.”
In short, the Son was to inherit based on merit; His seed inherits on the basis of the Son’s obedience.
This Father-Son covenant “preceded and was archetypal of the covenant of works between God and Adam. Indeed, Christ the Son in the covenant of redemption was archetypal of Adam in the covenant of works. As Adam’s archetype, Christ was truly, according to the covenant of redemption, the God-man wounded ‘before the foundation of the world’ for the creation of His bride.”
Since the covenant of redemption is archtypical of the covenant of works, there is a similar double structure in the covenant of works. For Adam specifically, “there was the principle of personal merit according to which the reward of everlasting life was promised and would be rendered to Adam as merited by his obedience, or the punishment of everlasting death was threatened and would be rendered to Adam as merited by his disobedience.” Adam, however, was also representative: By his “representative merit,” Adam’s posterited would have inherited “everlasting life” that had been “vicariously merited for them by Adam’s obedience and unilaterally imputed to them, or the punishment of everlasting death would be rendered to Adam’s posterity as vicariously and unconditionally merited for them by Adam’s disobedience and unilaterally imputed to them.”
In an extended footnote, they claim that making the covenant of redemption the archetype of the covenant of works removes at least one objection to merit, namely, that merit can only function between equals. Since the Father and Son are equals, the Son can win something from the Father, as wages earned. The merit-principle at work in the covenant of redemption is not identical to the merit-principle of the covenant of works. Rather, the two are analogous, as archetype and ectype:
“The covenant of redemption being archetype of the covenant of works, the merit principle in the latter is seen to be analogous, but not identical, to the merit principle in the former. 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; the difference is that in the covenant of redemption the obligation is according to strict justice as between equals, the Father and the Son, and that covenant originates in mutual agreement , while in the covenant of works it is according to covenantal justice as between Superior and inferior (God and Adam), and that covenant is sovereignly imposed by the Superior.”
In evaluating this argument, it’s important to note the terminological shift between the covenant of redemption and the covenant of works: The Son will merit “the everlasting inheritance of all things”; Adam will merit “everlasting life.”
How should we take this terminological shift? First, it could mean that Beisner and White, recognizing that the Son could not possibly “merit” life and the favor of the Father (since He necessarily and eternally has it), have to introduce a disanalogy between the covenant of redemption and the covenant of works. That is: The Son is already favored, already has life eternal in fellowship with the Father; and He obeys - within that prior relationship of favor - to obtain the inheritance. Adam, on the other hand, does not begin in a state of favor, and has to obey in order to obtain favor. This is the way Bryan Estelle (following Turretin) develops the covenant of works (in the recent volume edited by Scott Clark): In Eden, Estelle says, Adam would have been justified by works. But if Beisner and White follow this option, they have significantly to qualify the entire argument, since the covenant of works is no longer modeled on the covenant of redemption.
Second, they could push the analogy rigorously. That is, the Son is in a relationship of favor, and obeys to gain an inheritance; Adam also is in a relationship of favor, and has to obey to earn something more.
They take the second tack. This is evident from their explanation of what they mean by “everlasting life.” They explain in a footnote: “the reward promised [to Adam] for obedience was immortality. As we shall expound more fully below, the life given to Adam at creation was indeed life in fellowship with his Creator God. But as the divine commandment in Genesis 2:16–17 necessarily implies, God made his retention of that life subject to probation and death. Thus, the life promised to Adam for obedience to the divine commandment of Genesis 2:16–17 was life in fellowship with the Creator God and no longer subject to probation and death; it was, in a word, immortality. It was, if you will, ‘life upon life.’”
So, Adam was created in fellowship with God. Adam doesn’t have to do anything to earn or gain life and fellowship with God. He has those things by virtue of creation. Rather, he obeys in order to retain that life and fellowship, and to come to the place where he would be in fellowship without the threat of death. We might say, he obeys in order to attain eschatological life.
This implies several things about the covenant of works. First, the covenant of works is not about Adam earning life or fellowship with God, as some advocates of the doctrine have suggested. Second, it means that Adam’s obedience is set within a context of favor (Beisner and White reserve the word “grace,” too narrowly, to God’s acts of favor in the face of demerit). If the covenant of works is analogous to the covenant of redemption, Adam was created a beloved Son, and called to obey. If this is what Beisner and White are saying, then their position is actually quite close, at least in this respect, to the position of the FV and of Norman Shepherd.
On the other hand, their statement abou t 220;strict justice” in the interTrinitarian covenant is a big problem, and damages the gains of the other parts of the argument. Does “strict justice” mean “justice and nothing but justice”? If not, it’s not clear what it means. If it doesn’t mean that, then the whole point about merit is lost.
But how can the Father, Son and Spirit enter into any kind of covenant that is characterized by justice and only justice? How can any kind of covenant among the Persons of the Trinity be anything but love and goodness as well as justice? Indeed, if we keep in view the notion of God’s simplicity, how can we ever characterize God’s justice as “strict” justice, as justice and nothing but justice? Isn’t God’s justice always also loving and good? Isn’t His goodness also always just?
Beisner and White note a discontinuity between the Father-Son and Creator-Adam covenants, since Adam’s covenant is one of “covenantal justice” not “strict justice.” But that raises a similar series of questions. Is this covenantal justice “strictly” covenantal justice? Or is it also loving and good? If it is also loving and good, then we’re back to saying that Adam was created in a condition of favor, which is great. But if that’s what they mean, what’s happened to the analogy between the covenant of redemption and the covenant of works - one is “strict justice” and the other is “justice mixed with other factors”?
In short, the covenant with Adam is analogous with the covenant of redemption only if the former is fundamentally a covenant of favor, only if its demand for obedience is encompassed by grace (in the sense of undeserved favor). If the covenant with Adam is not encompassed by grace, then either it is not analogous to the covenant of redemption, or, more seriously, we have a significant blemish in the doctrine of God, an implicit denial of the simplicity of God or a suggestion that the Father and Son and Spirit might possibly relate in terms of “strict justice,” the suggestion that the Father might withhold his favor until His eternal, beloved Son has performed meritorious obedience.
As I said, all theology is theology proper.