The question of the perpetuity of the covenant of works also relates to an area of internal debate among paedobaptist covenant theologians: was the Mosaic covenant in some sense a republication of the covenant of works? There is even much disagreement as to how standard this republication thesis was in the history of reformed thought.
20The seventeenth century was no stranger to the controversy on the nature of the Mosaic or Sinatic covenant, as both John Ball and Francis Turretin observed four positions in their day: (1) the Mosaic covenant as a covenant of works; (2) the covenant was considered neither a covenant of works or grace but subservient to the covenant of grace; (3) the Mosaic covenant was a mixture of the covenant of grace and works; and finally (4) the Mosaic covenant was posited in the covenant of grace, but promulgates the law.
2120Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 97, follows what he describes as Meredith Kline’s
“defense of the classic federal view, which identified Israel’s national covenant (Sinai) with law (indeed, the republication of the covenant of creation), and personal election and salvation with the covenant of grace (Abraham).” Further, Kline’s position, argues Horton, is “an elaboration of a significant Reformed consensus in the past.” On the other hand, Letham, who rejects the perpetuity of the covenant of works and the notion of the Mosaic covenant as a republication of the covenant of works, acknowledges that Kline’s position has formal similarities in Reformed Orthodoxy, but it was a “minority report” and never “adopted by any Reformed confession.” Letham, “Not a Covenant of Works in Disguise,” 152-69, esp. 169. Also advancing a similar position in line with Letham is Cornelius P. Venema, “The Mosaic Covenant: A
‘Republication’ of the Covenant of Works? A Review Article: The Law is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant,” MAJT 21 (2010): 57-76. Those aligned with Meredith Kline and Michael Horton in arguing that many within Reformed orthodoxy affirmed a doctrine of republication include Clark, “Christ and Covenant,” 403-28; Mark W. Karlberg, Covenant Theology in Reformed Perspective:
Collected Essays and Book Reviews in Historical, Biblical, and Systematic Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 17-58; J. V. Fesko, “Calvin and Witsius on the Mosaic Covenant,” in The Law Is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant, ed. Bryan D. Estelle, J. V. Fesko, and David VanDrunen (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2009), 25-43; Brenton C. Ferry, “Works in the Mosaic Covenant: A Reformed Taxonomy,” in The Law Is Not of Faith, 76-105; and Brown and Keele, Sacred Bond, 105. See also Golding, Covenant Theology, 164-69.
21See Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 2:262; and J. Mark Beach, Christ and the Covenant: Francis Turretin’s Federal Theology as a Defense of the Doctrine of Grace (Göttingen, Germany:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 301-2. John Ball’s categorizations are laid out in Letham, “Not a Covenant of Works,” 153-60. Cf. Ward, God and Adam, 126-39. Turretin and Ball appear to affirm the fourth position.
See also Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. and trans. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., vol. 2, Anthropology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2013), 128-31. According to Denault, The Distinctiveness, 18-23; and Brian G.
Najapfour, “‘That It Might Lead and Direct Men Unto Christ’: John Owen’s View of the Mosaic Covenant,”
SBET 29 (2011): 196-204, the famous Puritan, John Owen, advanced the second position: the Mosaic or old
For most modern advocates of the republication thesis, which falls generally under the third view listed, the Mosaic covenant is a legal, conditional covenant that shares in the substance of the covenant of grace in terms of individual salvation (post-fall
salvation is always by grace through faith and not through obedient law keeping), and yet features a works principle reiterated from the covenant of works, which Israel was required to obey in order to receive the temporal covenantal blessings and retention of the land of Canaan (Lev 18:5, 26-28; 20:22).
22Israel was a corporate Adam, recapitulating Adam’s creation, fall, and also situated under probation, required to obey God’s commands to remain in the land and retain its national identity and status (Exod 20:12; 19:5, 7-8).
Instead, Israel received covenant curses for disobedience in the form of judgment and exile. These features of the Mosaic covenant typologically and pedagogically point to Christ’s obedience to the law as he fulfilled the stipulations of the covenant of works, meriting the blessings of salvation, and led his people to the everlasting rest of the eternal Promised Land.
23covenant was neither a covenant of works or of grace, but was a separate covenant re-enforcing the covenant of works but also having the end of leading and guiding men to Christ (covenant of grace).
22Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 31-34, 47, 90, 94, 97-104, 130-31; Brown and Keele, Sacred Bond, 106-16; McManigal, Encountering Christ of the Covenants, 64-78; R. Fowler White and E. Calvin Beisner, “Covenant, Inheritance, and Typology: Understanding the Principles at Work in God’s Covenants,” in By Faith Alone, 147-70, esp. 159-70; Bryan D. Estelle, J. V. Fesko, and David VanDrunen, “Introduction,” in The Law Is Not of Faith, 6-14; Ferry, “Works in the Mosaic Covenant,” 96- 97; Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR:
Wipf & Stock, 2006), 320-23; note also Kline, By Oath Consigned, 22-25. Hodge, Systematic Theology, 2:375, after placing the Sinaitic covenant within the covenant of grace, also highlights two other aspects:
“First, it was a national covenant with the Hebrew people. In this view the parties were God and the people of Israel; the promise was national security and prosperity; the condition was the obedience of the people as a nation to the Mosaic law; and the mediator was Moses. In this aspect it was a legal covenant. It said, ‘Do this and live.’ Secondly, it contained, as does also the New Testament, a renewed proclamation of the original covenant of works. It is as true now as in the days of Adam, it always has been and always must be true, that rational creatures who perfectly obey the law of God are blessed in the enjoyment of his favour;
and that those who sin are subject to his wrath and curse.”
23Proponents of the republication thesis view the Mosaic covenant as having the substance of the covenant of grace because it was a post-fall covenant with a history of grace (Abraham and the patriarchs) leading up to it and because it featured elements of grace (e.g., the sacrificial system), and because it
Other covenantalists reject the republication thesis as they understand such a perspective to be at odds with consistently maintaining two separate covenants, the prelapsarian covenant of works and the postlapsarian covenant of grace with the Mosaic covenant substantially being a covenant of grace while only accidentally distinct from the other administrations of the covenant of grace.
24Venema explains,
If what belongs to the substance of the covenant of works does not belong to the substance of the covenant of grace in any of its administrations, it is semantically and theologically problematic to denominate the Mosaic administration as in any sense a covenant of works.
2524Venema, “The Mosaic Covenant,” 92. For Letham’s reasons for rejecting the notion of republication, see “Not a Covenant of Works,” 147-48. Letham argues that Israel was already in covenant with Yahweh through the promises of the Abrahamic covenant and the law was given to the people by God’s free grace. Noting God’s redemption of Israel from Egypt (Exod 20:2-3), Letham, “Not a Covenant of Works,” 147, asserts the “process was not ‘do this and live’ but ‘you are my people; therefore you shall do this, and in doing this you shall live.’” Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:220-21, also argues that the covenant at Sinai was essentially no other than that with Abraham and carried the same benefits as the Abrahamic. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:222, writes that the Sinai covenant of grace “is but an explication for the one statement to Abraham: ‘Walk before me, and be blameless’ [Gen. 17:1], and therefore no more a cancellation of the covenant of grace and the foundation of the covenant of works than this word spoken to Abraham.” Similarly, Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 298, writes, “The Sinaitic covenant included a service that contained a positive reminder of the strict demands of the covenant of works. The law was placed very much in the foreground, giving prominence once more to the earlier legal element. But the covenant at Sinai was not a renewal of the covenant of works; in it the law was made subservient to the covenant of grace.” See also Robertson, Christ of the Covenants, 172-75; and John M. Frame, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2013), 72-73.
25Venema, “The Mosaic Covenant,” 92, emphasis original. Venema adds that in positing a principle that substantially belongs to the covenant of works economy to the Mosaic administration, “the Mosaic economy is viewed as though it included features at some level of administration that belong to the substance of a different covenant, namely, the prelapsarian covenant of works.” Ibid., 93. Perhaps this concern is not misplaced as Reformed Baptist covenantalist Johnson, The Kingdom of God, 24, writes, “It is interesting to note that some within Presbyterian covenant theology have stepped closer to the Baptist position by confessing that the Mosaic Covenant was a republication of the covenant of works. This admission significantly advocates a higher degree of discontinuity between the old and new covenants because the Mosaic covenant no longer is considered a manifestation of the covenant of grace.” Of course even those advocating the republication thesis would still affirm the Mosaic covenant as a covenant of grace, so Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 54-55, though Horton is ambiguous about how exactly the Mosaic is a covenant of grace when he states, “The covenant of grace is uninterrupted from Adam after the fall to the present, while the Sinai Pact, conditional and typological, has now become obsolete (Heb.
8:13), its mission having been fulfilled (Gal. 3:23-4:7).” Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 75.
Furthermore, Venema and Letham are unconvinced with the understanding of typology that is postulated by adherents of the republication thesis. Venema particularly highlights the problem of typology:
From the vantage point of this understanding of the nature of biblical typology, it is difficult to make sense of the claim that the Mosaic administration functioned typologically as a kind of covenant of works, at least at the stratum of Israel’s inheritance of temporal blessings. In order for this to be the case, a disjunction has to be posited between Israel’s inheritance of temporal blessings and her inheritance of spiritual blessings. In the usual view of Reformed covenant theology, however, the temporal blessings promised Israel are regarded typologically as a foreshadowing of the full spiritual blessing of fellowship with God in a renewed creation. The promise to Israel of blessing and life in the land of promise represented in the state of her immaturity a picture of the fullness of salvation in the life to come. Canaan was a
“type” of the “city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb.
11:10, ESV). Moreover, in Kline’s view of the typology of the Mosaic covenant, two radically opposed inheritance principles are posited, each of which is said to operate at a distinct level of Israel’s life, the earthly and the spiritual. In the case of Israel’s earthly inheritance, the operative principle is one of (meritorious) works; in the case of Israel’s spiritual inheritance, the operative principle is that of grace alone.
The problem with this conception is that the typology of Mosaic economy does not foreshadow or prefigure, at least at the level of Israel’s existence as a nation in the land of promise, the blessings that are granted freely and graciously to the new covenant people of God. The blessings are different in kind; and the principles for the inheritance of these blessings are radically different. To put the matter
differently, because the Mosaic administration actually consists of two levels of covenant administration, one of works and the other of grace, it cannot function at both levels as a typological promise of the new covenant, which is essentially and exclusively a covenant of grace.
26While the debate within covenant theology showcases an internal tension with how the Mosaic covenant is best understood within the conception of the two overarching covenants of works and of grace, all covenantalists interpret the moral law within the Mosaic covenant as functioning to instruct Israel for her need of a perfectly obedient Son and to arouse the consciousness of sin and one’s inability to obey God’s commands.
Moreover, despite the debate over the principle of works in the Mosaic covenant, all covenantalists agree that the features of the Mosaic administration, such as the tabernacle, temple, priesthood, sacrifices, and the Promised Land, functioned typologically of the
26Venema, “The Mosaic Covenant,” 90-91. See also Letham, “Not a Covenant of Works,” 170- 71; and O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Prophets (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2004), 364-65n6.