continued:
And here is a Presbitarian site linking to this article by Sherman Isbell which speaks of "The doctrine of the Westminster standards respecting the free offer of the gospel, compared with Herman Hoeksema's reconstruction of covenant theology"
And here is a Presbitarian site linking to this article by Sherman Isbell which speaks of "The doctrine of the Westminster standards respecting the free offer of the gospel, compared with Herman Hoeksema's reconstruction of covenant theology"
Contemporary Antinomianism
After surveying Calvin, Rollock and Rutherford, our understanding of what they have said may be sharpened by considering a different perspective. In the twentieth century, Herman Hoeksema (1898-1964), a Dutch American pastor and theological professor for the Protestant Reformed Churches, has radically reconstructed Reformed covenant theology. When we refer to Hoeksema's reconstruction as Antinomianism, we are not indicating a denial that the law of God is a rule of life to inform believers of their duty. Rather, we employ the term used by Rutherford and "Rabbi" Duncan to designate an error opposite to Arminianism: 1) A misconstruction of divine sovereignty as displacing man's responsible agency, so that 2) teaching about human agency is viewed as a concession to moral ability in the unregenerate. 3) The view that "All externals are useless or indifferent, since the Spirit alone gives life."(25)
Unlike the covenant theology of the Westminster standards, which conceives of the covenants as means to bring men to life, Hoeksema argued that covenant could not be a means to an end. Instead, he viewed covenant as the eternal relationship among the persons in the Trinity. Hoeksema condemned concepts of the covenant which centered upon things which would be done in time and in the creation. Even the covenant of redemption, that eternal engagement by the Son to procure salvation for the elect, is deemed unworthy of God. "And he is the God of the covenant, not according to a decree or according to an agreement or pact, but according to his very divine nature and essence."(26) Covenant is said to be a necessary feature of the divine nature, and men enjoy friendship with God by this same covenant life being extended to them in a derivative way.
Hoeksema's concern is that God's sovereignty is jeopardized if covenant did not exist as a necessary feature of the divine nature before it operated with reference to men. Otherwise, man would take precedence over God. Hoeksema insists that God could not enter into covenant with man unless covenant was already part of God's life, and that therefore covenant must be found eternally within the Trinity. He reasons that if everything in creation has its reason in who God is, then it must be that God's covenant with man presupposes an eternal covenant life within the Godhead: "He himself is in his eternal divine covenant life the ultimate and eternal and only reason for all that takes place in time and that exists eternally."(27)
Unhappily, Hoeksema, in defining covenant, does not take his starting point from the Bible's wealth of references to covenant, and the significant place which the Scriptures give to the responsible agency of men in covenant with God. Hoeksema begins rather with the assumption that anything in time, including covenants, must be structured in a way that would not allow a large place to man's agency, or to the means employed in the creation, lest this would threaten divine sovereignty. However, it needs to be asked whether Scripture itself says anything at all to the effect that covenant belongs to the nature and essence of the Godhead. In fact, Hoeksema lays aside the extensive biblical teaching about human agency in connection with God's covenant, in order to bring the covenant concept into line with his unwarranted speculation about an eternal covenant life in God. The Westminster standards, on the other hand, give due place to the requirements and conditions laid upon men in the covenants, while also displaying the harmony of human agency with biblical teaching about divine sovereignty.
Central in Hoeksema's doctrine of the covenant is his insistence that covenant cannot be a means to an end in history, a way to reach salvation. Instead, the covenant is itself the end, the enjoyment of communion with God. He rejects the idea that the covenant "is the way along which the salvation of the elect is established."(28) Whereas the Westminster standards teach that there is an administration of the covenant through the means of grace, in order to draw men into the kingdom or to interest them in Christ, Hoeksema will have none of this: "The covenant also is not a way to a certain end, is no means to the attainment of a certain purpose, is not the manner wherein we are saved. It is itself the highest purpose, the end, the eternal bliss, unto which all things tend and must tend."(29) Hoeksema wants to avoid relating the covenant to man's agency in an historical process, as if this would abridge divine sovereignty.
Hoeksema pursues his reconstruction of Reformed covenant theology by condemning the covenant of works formulation. The covenant of works speaks of placing Adam on probation, and of a promise which held out the prospect of life. Hoeksema objects that this makes the covenant a means for attaining something higher than Adam had before. Hoeksema has another explanation of the communion which Adam enjoyed with God at creation. Hoeksema says that Adam walked in the covenant life which had already existed in the life of the Godhead. This, Hoeksema believes, will give the proper priority to God. Hoeksema rejects the teaching in the Westminster standards (as in Shorter Catechism 12) that the covenant of works was entered into subsequent to creation, as a special act of providence. Hoeksema protests that this would make the covenant incidental, brought in to secure for Adam something he did not already possess, thereby reducing the covenant to a means to an end.
Hoeksema goes on to say that there has always been only one covenant, not a covenant of works and later a covenant of grace. The covenant under which unfallen Adam enjoyed friendship with God is the same covenant into which the Lord brings sinners today when he gives them communion with himself. The covenant of redemption is likewise discarded, because even this covenant between the Father and Son, entered into from eternity, would bring the covenant life into subservience to the accomplishment of salvation, and it cannot be that the covenant life in God could be a subordinate conception, or a means even to such an end as the accomplishment and application of redemption.
Notes
(25) William Young, "Antinomianism," in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 1, ed. Edwin H. Palmer, (Wilmington, Delaware: National Foundation for Christian Education, 1964), p. 272.
(26) Herman Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1966), p. 319. We may note in passing that Hoeksema gave another reason for condemning the concept of a covenant of redemption between God the Son according to his divine nature and God the Father. He considered that the classic Reformed concept amounted to an undue subordination within the Trinity, endangering the Son's equality of nature with the Father. These grounds cited for rejecting the covenant of redemption were already well answered: Rutherford, Covenant of Life, pp. 303, 310-11; John Owen, "Federal Transactions Between the Father and the Son," in An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1854-55), 2:86-87; Hugh Martin, The Atonement: In Its Relations to the Covenant, the Priesthood, the Intercession of our Lord (1870, reprint ed., Edinburgh: Knox Press, 1976), pp. 44-45.
(27) Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 297.
(28) Ibid., p. 318.
(29) Ibid., p. 322.
Go to the next installment:
The Preached Covenant: Part IV
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They said it, not me.
