href="#ulink_628e065b-df3b-51af-b0e7-2eecb6f7e2d6">108. Ibid., III, XI, 4.
The Covenant of Works
According to Wright, “covenant theology is one of the main clues, usually neglected, for understanding Paul.”109 This again strikes me as something of an odd statement, especially in light of the fact that both Reformed paedobaptists and Baptists ascribe to covenant theology, and, indeed, base their entire understanding of God’s dealings with man in a covenantal context. What Wright obviously means is that the old perspective has not adopted his understanding of covenant theology.
Reformed covenant theology was not invented in the 16th and 17th centuries, but refined and systematised. Wright, however, seems only too willing to distance himself from this, and, indeed, admits that he has done little reading in this area: “Like many New Testament scholars, I am largely ignorant of the Pauline exegesis of all but a few of the fathers and reformers. The Middle Ages and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had plenty to say about Paul, but I have not read it.”110 He caricatures the covenant of works, which he refers to as a “works contract.”111 In its place, he speaks of “a covenant of vocation,”112 as if this is something that is neglected by the covenant of works proponents. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. The epithet, “unbiblical,” as I hope to show, is more applicable to Wright’s position.
A covenant is essentially a mutually agreed promise that is based upon the fulfillment of certain conditions. It essentially has three parts: first, there is a promise made, second, the conditions are stipulated, and thirdly, there is a penal sanction laid down in case one party fails to abide by the conditions. God entered into a covenant with the first man, Adam, telling him that he could eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:16,17). While not called a covenant in Scripture, it clearly had the necessary ingredients. Wilhelmus a Brakel provides a succinct definition of the covenant God made with Adam:
The covenant of works was an agreement between God and the human race as represented in Adam, in which God promised eternal life upon condition of obedience, and threatened eternal death upon disobedience. Adam accepted both this promise and this condition.113
The covenant was based on the representative federal principle, the actions of our first parents had repercussions for all their posterity. When they became disobedient, God deemed us all likewise disobedient (Rom 5:12:16–17).
Concerning the 17th Century understanding of the covenant of works as put forward in the Westminster Confession, Wright states:
Such a view of the relationship between God and humans is a travesty. It is unbiblical. It insists on taking us to a goal very different from the one held out in scripture. It ignores, in particular, the actual meaning of Israel’s scriptures, both in themselves and as they were read by the earliest Christians. And it insists on a diagnosis of the human that is, ironically, trivial compared with the real thing.114
To call such a position a “travesty” and “unbiblical” when it has been espoused by godly men who have spent a lifetime in the Scriptures can be construed as arrogance.115 Have they really taken it to a “goal very different from the one held out in scripture”? I don’t think so. The bible is unambiguous, informing us that humanity became separated from God and placed under a curse as a result of the first Adam’s disobedience. The ultimate goal of redemption is that sinners be reconciled to God, becoming a new humanity; one that is a perfect divine image bearer, living upon a new earth, within a new heaven, serving the Lord forever. To say that the old perspective’s diagnosis of the human condition is trivial is itself the result of trivializing what Reformed Protestants believed.
As he so often does, Wright tends to speak disparagingly of the old perspective on a number of points before going on to say something that the old perspective fully endorses. Wright tells us that “what the bible offers is not a ‘works contract’ but a covenant of vocation. The vocation in question is that of being a genuine human being, with genuinely human tasks to perform as part of the Creator’s purpose for this world.”116 He then goes on to state that, “the diagnosis of the human plight is not simply that humans have broken god’s moral law—though this is true as well. This law breaking is a symptom of a much more serious disease.”117 I know of no Reformed believer who would not wholeheartedly agree with this. Since the Fall humanity has turned away from that which God called it to, worshiping the things created rather than the Creator. Individual sins are the result of humanity’s fallen condition, one where the principle of sin reigns in the heart. As far as a “works contract” and “vocation” are concerned, the Scriptures speak of a vocation that is dependent on the fulfillment of a “works contract” in order to overcome the enmity that exists between God and man. It is not a question of either/or. Before sinners can embark on that vocation, or their God-given calling, where they can offer unto God their bodies in living and acceptable sacrifice, there must first be the fulfillment of certain conditions. Conditions that require perfect righteousness and a propitiatory substitutionary death.
Prior to sin, the law was unto life; it was for the justification of the righteous. Adam had been created in God’s image and after his likeness (Gen 1:27), with the law of God written upon his heart. In his original righteousness, this law served to vouchsafe that all was well. Had Adam succeeded in keeping the stipulation he would have obtained eternal life for both himself and his posterity. He would have partaken of the tree of life that is now available for all believers because Christ, the second Adam, has succeeded where the first Adam failed (Rev 2:7; 22:2). When Adam118 failed he had then to face punishment. God said to him, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17).
All of humanity is then exiled from God, unless, of course, they have been reconciled on account of Christ’s completed work. When we consider Christ’s work in reference to exile it is this exile one should bear in mind, not any exile that the nation of Israel experienced. As already said, when Wright alludes to Israel’s exile he fails to emphasize the fact that the nation’s exile was but a type of that exile that applies to all humanity because of Adam’s sin.
It is important to bear in mind that the covenant of works has not gone away. God still demands perfect obedience and the punishment of sin. Man is spiritually impotent and at enmity with the God who created him, and there is no way back to God for fallen man through his own efforts, for truly, as the Psalmist says, there is no one who is righteousness before God (Psa 143:2). John Bunyan aptly portrays the relationship that now exists between the sinner and the law:
The law was now only unto death; it was powerless to do otherwise. With the entrance of sin man lost his first estate and was banished from God’s presence, God “drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (Gen 3:24). Death here meant estrangement from God. Immediately there was spiritual death, and eventually, physical or bodily death. The law, as it is a covenant of works, doth not allow any repentance unto life, to those that live and die under it. For the law being once broken by thee, never speaks good unto thee, neither doth God at all regard these, if thou be under that covenant, not withstanding all thy repentings, and also thy promise to do so no more. ‘No,’ saith the law, ‘thou hast sinned, therefore I must curse thee, for it is even, and I
