Double Adamic Covenant

Double Adamic Covenant May 23, 2006

Many of the Protestant Scholastics argued that a covenant of some sort is “natural” to man, not a “supernatural” addition to a pure, non-covenantal existence. But the “natural” covenant is often distinguished from the specific terms of the covenant of works, the prohibition of the tree of knowledge.

Heidegger fulsomely describes the natural covenant in this way: “It may also be recognized naturally, that there is a covenant intervening between God and man. Man’s conscience keeps asserting that to God the Creator and Lord of man obedience on his part as a creature is bound to be enjoined and He must be loved singly as the most excellent and the Author of all good. In such obedience and love moreover consists the duty which God requires of man . . . .


“Then too man is naturally not ignorant of the promise of God in promising good to the obedient. Indeed he knows that God as the most excellent is not sought, looked up to, loved in vain, in fact that he who loves enjoys by love the God whom he loves; in which enjoyment of God man’s blessedness consists. And since man is not unaware of being God’s creature and dependent (cliens), he is equally not unaware of the necessary requirement, that there should be friendship between himself and God, who offers it on terms. And no one can doubt the parallel requirement, that he in turn should expect from God the reward promised to the obedience and should be able to receive it because of God’s truthfulness and faithfulness known by nature.”

Frequently, the natural covenantal relationship between the Creator and the creature is seen as the foundation on which the covenant of works is based. Coeccius suggests that the covenant of works “rests upon the law of nature” and therefore “may be called the covenant of nature.” Robert Rollock writes that the covenant of works “is founded in nature,” since “after God had created man after his own image, pure and holy, and had written his law in his mind, he made a covenant with man.” This natural goodness “thus beautified with holiness and righteousness, and the light of God’s law, is the foundation of the covenant of works” since “a covenant on condition of good works and perfect obedience to God’s law could not well stand with the justice of God unless he had first created him pure and holy, and had engraved his law in his heart, from whence those good works might proceed.”

William Ames describes the need for a covenant of works this way: “since man is less perfect than the angels and needs more instruction and practice, something positive was added to (though on the same basis as) the law of nature . . . [and] because man in this animal life understands by the senses and is led by the hand, as it were, from sensible to intelligible and spiritual things, outward symbols and sacraments were added to the spiritual law to illustrate and confirm it. These symbols contained a special and positive law, a profession of general obedience to the law of nature put in man before, and a solemn confirmation of promises and threats as sanctions.”

William Strong makes a similar point: “God dealt with man in a Covenant-way in his Creation. Man stands bound to God by a double bond of Creation and stipulation; the one is natural and necessary, and the other voluntary. Thus God binds the Creature to himself by all imaginable engagements, to prevent future apostasy. By the one we are bound to God, and by the other God is bound to us.”


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