Adam & Covenant Introduction Having Outlined the Broader Metaphysical
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CHAPTER TWO ADAM & COVENANT Introduction [I]f there is truly to be religion, if there is to be fellowship between God and man, if the relation between the two is to be also (but not exclusively) that of a master to his servant, of a potter to clay, as well as that of a king to his people, of a father to his son, of a mother to her child, of an eagle to her young, of a hen to her chicks, and so forth; that is, if not just one relation but all relations and all sorts of relations of dependence, submission, obedience, friendship, love, and so forth among humans find their model and achieve their fulfillment in religion, then religion must be the character of a covenant.1 Having outlined the broader metaphysical foundations of the God-world relationship, we now narrow to consider the historical and relational context to which the creaturely image of God belongs. Humanity’s rela- tionships with God, the created world (space) and history (time) together provide the context for understanding the character and purpose of humans being imago Dei. The theological concept that best captures these relationships, for Bavinck, is that of covenant. This chapter proceeds in four sections. The first explores how Bavinck’s use of the covenant idea recapitulates the basic contours of his Creator- creature ontology. That is, a covenant relationship between God and humanity is not something added to or other than the Creator-creature distinction he has already labored to establish; it is a different, and more closely scriptural vocabulary tasked to secure the same theological distinctions. The three sections that follow each concern the covenant established by God with Adam in the state of integrity, that is, the so-called covenant of works.2 Section two of this chapter argues that Bavinck’s enthusiastic embrace of the doctrine is far from incidental and not a lingering relic of scholastic rationalism he failed to excise. His self-conscious and thought- ful appropriation of the Reformed orthodox tradition is illustrated by 1 RD, II, 569. 2 Bavinck’s treatment of the “covenant of grace” will be taken up in chapter four. 66 chapter two examining his treatment of the intersection between law, grace and cove- nant.3 It begins to emerge that the covenant of works is essential to under- standing not only his view of biblical anthropology, but biblical soteriology as well. It is an essential foundation for the “architectonic” structure of Bavinck’s understanding of redemption.4 Because the covenant of works is so strongly emphasized, it should be noted that a number of signifi- cant scholars, each influenced by Bavinck and sympathetically situated in the stream of his theological heritage, have expressed reservations about the doctrine. While the representatives of Old Princeton, notably Charles Hodge and Geerhardus Vos, energetically commended the doctrine of the covenant of works, others were more reluctant: John H. Stek and Anthony A. Hoekema of Calvin Theological Seminary, and John Murray, the pre- eminent systematician of Westminster Theological Seminary, each object on semantic and conceptual grounds, questioning whether the term “cov- enant” can be applied to the prelapsarian state of affairs.5 If these theolo- gians have difficulty with the language of “covenant,” G.C. Berkouwer and others object to the language of “works,” apparently convinced that the doctrine exalts a legal, “nomological” human existence over a God-human relationship of grace and fellowship. Because space forbids lengthy expo- sitions of each of these theologians, major discussion is limited to one representative example.6 Having demonstrated Bavinck’s basic adherence to the Reformed orthodox tradition of the covenant of works, the two sections that follow more narrowly focus on two issues of special emphasis in which Bavinck makes explicit what is perhaps more latent in the tradition. Section three illumines why and how the covenant of works forms the structural frame- work for Bavinck’s “creational eschatology.” In other words, the eschato- 3 The “Reformed orthodox tradition” refers to the broad consensus achieved in the post-Reformation period of codification of Reformed theology; see Richard A. muller’s periodization of this tradition in PRRD, Vol. 1, 30–32. The use of “Reformed orthodoxy” at present corresponds to the period of “high orthodoxy,” ca. 1640–1725. 4 The need to emphasize this structural importance of the covenant of works, as noted in the introduction, is indirectly highlighted by its near-absence in Syd Hielema’s lengthy dissertation on the structure of Bavinck’s understanding of redemption. 5 It seems that for Hoekema and Murray the question is merely a semantic one, since they otherwise wish to affirm the basic content of the doctrine; C.f., Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 121; John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, reprint 1975), 178–210; The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1977). 6 notable responses to the former group of critics are noted in the footnote discussion below. The exception is made for Berkouwer, whose rejection of the covenant of works is evaluated at the end of section two, the “Covenant of works.”.