Yes, I also see the situations of the two Adams as parallel, and I am eager to apply the same criteria to both. When the last Adam stood (and we have an actual example as opposed to our earlier hypothetical), what did He do? He praised God in the great congregation. “For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him. The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever” (Ps. 22:24-26).

Jesus never sinned. Jesus faithfully died, taking our sins with Him. He rose from the dead. Whom shall we thank for all this? We should do the same thing Jesus did — praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Genesis 2 states pretty clearly that Adam was offered free access to the tree of life. He had ALL the trees, with ONE exception – the tree of knowledge (Gen 2:16-17). We might talk about merit with regard to the tree of knowledge, but as far as access to life, it was pure gift for Adam. He didn’t have to do ANYTHING to get it.

And he was placed in the garden – the sanctuary, where Yahweh walked in the spirit of the day – as soon as he was created. No merit there either. He had access to God immediately upon being created.

The issue it seems to me is the unnecessarily huge weight that traditional covenant theology (TCT) places on the Jesus-Adam parallel in Rom. 5. Despite the fact that this is a hotly controverted passage (see e.g. Witherington’s recent work on the failure of evangelical theology), TCT simply insists that Jesus’ obedience wins merit before God, understood as that which man deserves, paid by debt, not by grace.

This is precisely how C. Hodge states it in his systematics. The elect will be able to stand at the heavenly tribunal and *demand* salvation on the grounds of meritorious law-keeping, so debt-based is our salvation. Of course, we demand it in that Jesus is God’s creditor and his debt-demand has been imputed to us, but it’s fundamentally a matter of debt, not of grace.

Doug, I’m sympathetic with your attempts here, but it seems to me that the majority (by no means all) of the Reformed tradition constructs the CoW in the manner Darryl, Carl and Kline have described. In my view, we can’t rehabilitate it.

Of course, there are two covenants, childhood and maturity.

And of course, after sin, there are two other covenants: in Adam and in Christ.

And of course there are 8 covenants in the Biblical history, and most of those comes first in a Groom form and then after death and resurrection in a Bride form.

So, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What I wrote is that the psychology of faith is the same but that the situation (read: covenant) is different.

James: how monocovenantal of you.

Doug: you seem to have played a bit of a switch in your response. You say that Adam should thank God for his deliverance (had he kept the covenant). And then you say that his obedience was a gift. I would have thought you’d say that Adam’s deliverance was a gift. Now you’re saying that also his obedience would also have been a gift?

While I’m at it, Doug, do you describe Christ’s obedience as a gift? The connection of the failure of Adam with the success of Christ is why I at least am eager to apply the same criteria to Adam that we hold for Christ. Do you disagree with that construction of the parallel between Adam and Christ?

If “obedience” means “faith-full obedience,” fine.

But what does “bless” mean here? I believe the Bible teaches that when Adam had learned wisdom (knowledge of good and evil) by experience, as Hebrews 6:14 says, he would be old enough and ready to go out of the garden into the wider world. That’s the “blessing” of a birthday present, not the “blessing” of something earned. I find absolutely no “merit” theology in the Bible, and I think this is a case where the desire to honor tradition has messed us up. With many conservative 20th century Reformed theologians, I want to jettison this whole terminology. It’s not in the Bible. It’s not helpful. The Reformers should have eliminated the word instead of trying to salvage it.

As a systematician, I always ask what is the negative. That is, by way of negation what is being safeguarded. When a doctrine is rephrased into the “it is not the case that….” mode, you find out (a) whether it’s important or not, and (b) what’s really being said. Theology done by way of eminence and analogy must always be accompanied by the via negativa. I ask “what is any notion of merit designed to safeguard,” and I find no answer. It’s the introduction of non-Biblical language for no good reason that I can find.

But, if someone wants to use it, and carefully define all the words, I’m not at war with him. (Though the past several years has shown that while I’m for peace, a lot of merit people are for war; Ps. 120:7.) Pastorally speaking, however, I’m not interested in putting that kind of language onto people.

I may be overanswering your question. I dealt with it all pretty thoroughly (I thought) in my essay in the Federal Vision book. I don’t know that trying to condense all that here would be helpful or confusing.

But to return to the initial point that Darryl made above, are we then agreeing that modern Reformed theologians who do advocate a strict (raw) merit system are skewing the entire Reformed system? And that they are not confessional? And that they perhaps ought not to be leading the charge against FV types?

In other words, the covenant of works (nature/life) created a situation in which God’s freely bound Himself to bless the perfect obedience of Adam.