Finally, I do not understand the attraction of these sorts of arguments, i.e., the sorts of arguments that imply that Reformed theology is in crisis and the only way to save it is to kill it. This is the “we had to bomb the village in order to save it” mentality. No, we don’t. What we need to do is to get back to Scripture as understood by our churches and our classic writers. The fault is not with our theology, piety, and practice. The fault lies with those of us who don’t seem to understand what they seem to want to destroy.

I. SUMMARY

In a post (HT: Aquila Report) dated Friday 9 August, Bill Evans raises the question whether there is in Reformed theology what he calls “pervasive covenantalism” or an over emphasis or imbalanced emphasis in Reformed theology on covenant. He points to persistent internecine arguments among the Reformed over how define covenant and how to talk about conditionality in covenant theology, which, he notes, is odd for a tradition in which “the notion of covenant” has long been thought to be its “very hallmark.” He concedes that his argument will not be received favorably by those who are “suspicious of any suggestion of discontinuity between Calvin and the later Calvinists….” He contends that Calvin’s use of “the covenant theme is both limited and judicious” but that later, “some Reformed thinkers came to believe that all God’s dealings with humanity must be covenantal.”

Clearly Evans is not entirely comfortable with the mainstream of the older Reformed tradition(s) of covenant theology. E.g., he suggests that the Reformed doctrine of the pre-fall covenant of works lacked the same “exegetical and historical foundation” as their doctrine of the covenant of grace. This is Evans’ way of saying that the doctrine of the covenant of works is speculative. His discomfort with classical Reformed theology is even clearer when he writes that the

covenant theme was even projected into the divine psychology via the notion of an eternal “covenant of redemption” between the Father and the Son to accomplish redemption for the elect.

This problem of “covenant overload” (he cites John Stek’s article by this title) had led to a series of problems:

1. The exegetical foundations for the covenants of works and redemption are inferential at best.
2. Following Stek, he argues that the OT appropriation of covenantal language/themes was an accommodation to the ANE world and was never intended to be “a timeless, all-encompassing organizing principle of theology.”
3. Excessive focus on covenant has distorted some of the biblical materials by flattening out of redemptive-historical differences. E.g., instead of of focusing on the transition from Old Covenant to New, the transition is located in Genesis 3, which, in short has led Reformed folk too often to ignore the differences between Israel and the church (as in theonomy).
4. We still haven’t arrived at an agreed definition of covenant.
5. Covenant is too often used as a catch-all and cover for vague theology.
6. Oscillation between antinomianism and legalism
7. All of this covenantalism has led to “extrinsic views of solidarity in sin and salvation in which the unity and concreteness of salvation in Christ has been obscured.

This latter problem led to “[n]otions of “federal” or “covenantal” or “legal” unions with Christ and Adam” which allowed “federalist (sic) such as Charles Hodge, William Cunningham, and Louis Berkhof” who criticized Calvin “for his view of union with Christ” and led away from his “rich sacramental theology” and ultimately to Karl Barth.

His proposed alternative is to go back to Calvin’s “more limited and careful deployment of the covenant theme….” He’s attracted to Andy McGowan’s critique of federal categories as a way of describing divine-human relations. To move away from Reformed federal theology would connect us with the “Irenaean tradition of real solidarity with Adam and Christ as it was mediated to both East and West.”

II. AGREEMENT

It’s interesting that this post comes just now as I’ve been writing a series oncovenant theology recently. Before I reply in substance, let me say that, to be sure, some of what Evans says is true. It is beyond question that there have been debates in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries about how to define covenant. There have been, in those same centuries, debates among Reformed theologians about to speak about conditionality in the covenant of grace. To concede a broader point, there has been diversity in Reformed theology. Evans is surely right when he notes that the term “covenant” is too often employed as a catch-all (my term) or more pejoratively, as a sort of magician’s wand, whereby the writer describes his view/project as “covenantal” and having described his work as “covenantal” it is supposed to be beyond criticism by Reformed folk. Further, I think that it is reasonable to be concerned about “flattening out” the biblical story. Finally, agree that some of our writers lost sight of Calvin’s and the confessional doctrine of the sacraments.

III. REPLY

B. B. Warfield famously said that covenant theology is “architectonic” for Reformed theology, i.e., as covenant theology goes, so goes Reformed theology.   What Evans has suggested is nothing short of a radical revision of Reformed theology. This is not the first time that Evans has signaled his profound discontent with Reformed theology. In 2008 he called for “a decisive break with the ordo salutis thinking.” In this post he continues the earlier trajectory.

As I noted before, however, it is far from clear that Reformed folk should be interested in Evans’ alternative. The first reason for our skepticism should be his account of what he’s rejecting. Were Evans’ account of the history of Reformed or its relations to Patristic theology  true, we might well have reason to be interested. His account, however, is somewhat mystifying to this theologian. One could be a little more sympathetic to Evans’ account of Calvin and Reformed orthodoxy were this 1859, 1959 or even 1979 but it’s 2013 and his narrative is simply not tenable or remotely credible.

Read More