More from Ward

One of the most illuminating chapters of Ward’s book on the covenant of works is his discussion of grace and merit in chapter 17. Some highlights:

1) He notes that the word “grace” is used in the NT “without any notion of favour in the presence of demerit,” citing Lk 1:30, 2:53; Acts 2:47 and adding that the word “is widely used in this more general sense in the 17th century Calvinistic writers.”

2) He says that the covenantal arrangements in Eden were an act of “undeserved kindness and grace.” Some writers said that God “could have left man in the state of nature without a covenant of works, and terminated his existence at his pleasure.” But others taught that “the character of God is such that he cannot hold his love and all its effects from a holy and innocent creature made in his image. God is love and it is the nature of love to seek union and communion with the beloved. On this view it is still gracious of God to create humanity knowing that the necessity of his nature would require self-giving in covenant to the holy creature.” He cites Witsius: “Whatever . . . is promised to the creature by God, ought all to be ascribed to the immense goodness of the Deity . . . Nor can God on account of this his goodness refuse to communicate himself to, or give the enjoyment of himself to, an innocent, an holy creature . . . He does not love in reality, who desires not to communicate himself to the object of his affection.” On this point, Witsius definitely has the better argument: Once God has acted to create Adam, can He forget to be gracious?

3) The reward offered in the covenant of works is neither condignly nor congruently meritorious. Adam’s obedience would not have had any intrinsic worth to earn wages, and it was not congruent merit in the sense of “merit not truly adequate but accepted as sufficient.” Thus, “the distinction between merit as meaning something obtained and merit as meaning reward due for the intrinsic worth of something should be kept in view; the former is acceptable, the latter not.” Patrick Gillespie put it bluntly: “Though Justice had some place in this Covenant, yet merit had none at all . . . Merit had as little place in man’s integrity as demerit.” As Turretin puts it, “There was no debt (properly so called) from which man culd derive a right, but only a debt of fidelity, arising out of the promise by which God demonstrated his infallible and immutable constancy and truth.” Merit could be understood only de pacto , and arises, for Turretin, more from the faithfulness of God to His pledge of reward than from any imputed value in human obedience. Obadiah Sedgwick’s claim that “The covenant of works, if we could attain unto it, would now be matter of glorying in ourselves” as “an anomaly in the Puritan and Reformed tradition and possibly reflects a rhetorical flourish on the popular preachers’ part.”

4) Ward suggests that dispensationalism was prepared for by certain tensions and ambiguities in covenant theology’s evaluation of the Mosaic covenant. The majority position held that the Mosaic covenant as an administration of the covenant of grace, but “acknowledged a legal aspect which looked like a covenant of works, and a minority actually regarded it as a covenant of works although subservient to the covenant of grace.” This notion of a “mixed covenant” led to a “dualistic” tendency, illustrated by Isaac Watts, who claimed that the “covenant of works” aspect “related to temporal blessings in the land fo Canaan,” while the “covenant of grace” aspect had to do with spiritual blessings and eternal life. The Jews’ error was “to mistake the way of justification on the temporal level (works) with the way of justification on the spiritual level (faith).” This view, expressed earlier than Watts by a minority of scholars, was not dispensationalist in itself, but the confusion about the nature of the Mosaic covenant gave a “foothold” to alternative explanations.

Debates on infant baptism also contributed to the rise of dispensationalism. Some Baptists even considered the Abrahamic covenant a mixed covenant, with the “natural seed” receiving temporal benefits and the “spiritual seed” receiving gospel blessings. Thus, the OC, even in its Abrahamic form, is radically different from the NC, since the NC is completely a “covenant of grace.”

(Ward includes in a footnote a wonderful passage from John Owen, who is rebutting a Roman Catholic view: “I cannot but somewhat admire how it came into the heart or mind of any man to think or say, that God ever gave a law or laws, precept or precepts, that ‘should respect the outward man only, and the regulation of eternal duties.’ A thought of it is contrary to all the essential properties of the nature of God . . . . The life and foundation of lal the laws under the old testament was, ‘Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy soul’; without which no outward obedience was ever accepted with him.”)

5) Ward claims that “clarity in regard to Adam’s original status as a son has only come into its own in the 20th century.” Adam’s filial position is still regularly denied. Donald Macleod argues taht “the primary relationship between God and man is a relationship of works and obedience.” This is also seen in the view of some 17th century writers that there was a two-stage covenant prior to the fall: First, God created Adam in a servile position, and then, in Gen 2, graciously added a covenant. He notes that many recent Reformed writers have argued that man is in covenant relationship with God from the moment of his creation, and that this relationship is essentially a filial one.

6) Interestingly, Ward notes that the issue of the covenant has been developed largely in relation to infant baptism over the past several decades. Earlier, it was developed mainly in the context of justification: “discussions in the last 50 years on the covenant have not been in the setting of justification, nor have they been well informed on the classic period of Reformed theology in the 17th century.”

7) Ward’s discussion of justification is less than completely compelling. He is especially interested in showing the systematic correlation of the covenant of works doctrine and justification by faith. He makes the following points: 1) God must have required perfect obedience from Adam, else why should it be required of Jesus? 2) If there is no probation in the covenant of works, then how does Christ, as the Last Adam, do anything more than restore us to the Adamic position? He does, but how does this work, if Adam’s obedience had only maintained him in his original condition. 3) Justification is more than forgiveness of sin, and therefore the obedience of Christ in life “comes into its own.” 4) Adam and Jesus both had to obey from faith and trust in God. The sinner is “called to faith in Christ, to union and communion with him in all the virtue of his saving acts.” 5) Good works are the fruit of true faith.

With #1 and 2, I have no objection; I agree that Adam and Christ both were required to obey without sin, and believe that there is an eschatological trajectory already within the protological Edenic situation.

With #3, Ward’s claims are vague. We are treated as if we have fully obeyed, he says, and this means that Christ’s obedience “comes into its own.” But how, exactly? Does “come into its own” mean “imputed”? Or is there another way that Christ’s active obedience could “come into its own” without positing th

e imputation of Christ’s active obedience? It would seem so: Christ obeyed perfectly, fulfilling the law without sin; Christ subjected Himself to the judgment of the Father on our sin, obeying “passively”; the Father was pleased, and judged Jesus to be the Righteous One, declaring that verdict by raising His Son from the dead; in raising Jesus, the Father was saying, “I judge My Son to be the one who has obeyed perfectly even unto death; by union with Christ, that verdict is also passed on us. In this construction, there is no “independent” imputation of the active obedience of Christ, nor even of the passive obedience for that matter; we are regarded as righteous, and Christ’s righteousness is reckoned as ours, because of our union with Him in His resurrection. What is imputed is the verdict, not the actions of Jesus, and this is possible and just because Christ is our covenant head acting on our behalf.

With #4, what Ward leaves unsaid is as important as what he says. Is the believer not called to obedience?? If we are united to Christ “in all the virtue of his saving acts,” does this not include union with Christ in the “virtue” or power fo sanctification? If Ward agrees with this, it’s not clear exactly how he differs from Shepherd (whom he criticizes). If not, then how does he avoid antinomianism (which he also criticizes)? He claims that Shepherd’s view leaves us with a basically Arminian doctrine of justification: “The obligation in the covenant for the believer today is the same obligation Adam had pre-fall. In short, Christ has secured forgiveness by his death but logically we are put in a position where our covenant faithfulness is the way to salvation.” What is missing from this is the crucial reality of union with Christ. Yes, we do have the same obligation that Adam (and Abraham, and Moses, and David, and Jesus) had, namely, the obedience of faith. And, yes, covenant faithfulness is the way to salvation, for the “doers of the law will be justified” at the final judgment. But this is all done in union with Christ, so that “our” covenant faithfulness is dependent on the work of the Spirit of Christ in us, and our covenant faithfulness is about faith, trusting the Spirit to will and to do according to His good pleasure. This does not damage the present reality of justification, since we have been judged righteous by virtue of union with Christ, the same union by which we are being sanctified.

#5 is correct, but it would be nice to see Ward do more to integrate the points he makes in #4 (and his criticisms of Shepherd) with his welcome emphasis on the importance of good works.