The Covenant of Works: Coordinates for Discussion

Contents:

A number of questions hover around the issue of the covenant with Adam. Some of these questions have been discussed openly; some have rarely been raised. For the purpose of advancing contemporary discussion of the Adamic covenant, I raise these issues here. Thus what follows is not intended to answer every question regarding the “covenant of works,” but to aid us in recognizing the breadth of the issues involved.

1. Basic issues

Several important questions have already been debated widely. Particularly:

Was there really a covenant between God and Adam?
Was the covenant between God and Adam in existence from creation, or imposed later?
Was the covenant designed as a means for Adam to merit eternal life through good works?
Was the covenant with Adam “gracious”?

For the most part, I do not intend to rehash these discussions at any length here, which others have dealt with more competently than I could. I will simply indicate my own position briefly:

Yes, there was a covenant between God and Adam, which is indicated in a number of ways. For example: i. The covenant name of God, YHWH, runs throughout the Genesis 2 account. ii. God engaged in covenantal fellowship with Adam from the beginning (see Gen 3.8). iii. The Pauline parallels between Adam and Israel presuppose a covenantal relationship. iv. I believe the best interpretation of Hosea 6.7 indicates an Adamic covenant (“like Adam they transgressed the covenant”).
The covenant between God and Adam was creational, rather than a later imposition. This is reflected on a number of levels: i. Adam was created in the image of God, who is Himself covenantal. ii. Paul identifies Christ with the “beginning” in which all things were created (compare Gen 1.1 with Col 1.16-18). Adam was head of creation before God enjoined upon him the prohibition against eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But this headship was also covenantal, since creation was subjected to the futility of his fall (see Rom 8.20).
In agreement with the majority of historical Reformed theologians (see Ward, God & Adam), I deny that Adam was intended to merit anything. Adam was required to obey God perfectly, but such obedience was not meritorious.
The graciousness of the Adamic covenant has been widely disputed recently. I must devote a little more attention to this.
Much of this dispute is simply semantic: whether “grace” ought to be employed apart from a context of sin. And it is certainly true that usually the term is used in such a context in Scripture. One of the reasons for this, one would think, is because such a context is the predominant one in Scripture. Sin, of course, makes the position of the creature truly critical, and surely no one denies that the post-fall situation requires a new dimension to grace. One suspects that both sides on this question are talking past one another to some degree, even on points where there is genuine agreement. One must press behind the semantic issue, and ask whether something substantial underlies the debate over words.

While the term most often does refer to God’s mercy in the context of sin, this is not always the case, since Jesus Himself is described as the recipient of divine grace (Lk 2.52 charis; cf the use of the related verb charizomai in Phi 2.9: God “graced” Christ with a name above every name). Both the Hebrew (chen) and Greek (charis) words for “grace” also mean “favour,” and seem widely to refer to love in its condescending aspect (although this does not exhaust the uses). Or, if one prefers the widely-accepted definition: grace is unmerited favour. In that sense, the Adamic covenant was gracious, since Adam did nothing to be created or set within the covenant context.

The real dispute, however, lies in precisely what standing Adam had within that context: Was he in an essentially neutral position over against the divine covenant Partner, or was he in a position of love and acceptance? Most other questions regarding the “graciousness” of the Adamic covenant probably amount to little more than disputes about words. But on this point, I believe it is very crucial to affirm the latter position: Adam was no neutral partner; he was from the beginning the object of God’s love and acceptance. We need no further proof of this than that (apart from the tree of knowledge of good and evil) from the beginning he was urged to partake of all the trees of the garden, including the tree of life (Gen 2.16). (The urging is as emphatic as the prohibition of the one tree; eating you shall eat, the original Hebrew construction, corresponds exactly to the warning, dying you shall die, that is attached to the tree of knowledge. This is nicely reflected in the ESV’s corresponding uses of “surely”: “you may surely eat. . . you shall surely die.” Unfortunately, the parallel is lost in many other translations, which tend to substitute the first “surely” with “freely;” see e.g. NKJV, NIV, and NASB.)

The above affirmation does not mean that Adam’s position was final, nor that there was a probationary aspect to it (which is surely clear enough from the outcome). But the fact that one may advance to a greater stage of glory hardly demonstrates a neutral position. Jesus Himself, after all, was the beloved Son, in whom the Father was well pleased, but one can hardly suggest that His position as a mortal infant was the same as His present position as the glorified, resurrected One. The progression is not neutrality to acceptance, but from “glory to glory.”

These are rather introductory questions, although clearly they remain matters of discussion and controversy to this day. For example, my position on (2) is in agreement with Kline, and in opposition to numerous others; my position on (3) is at variance with Kline, and strongly in line with the dominant historical Reformed tradition, although it has been rarely unanimous. As for (4), it appears to me that much of the tradition appears unfortunately unclear regarding the nature of Adam’s original standing (which is perhaps why the related issues are so hotly debated today), and is a matter that is crucial to resolve.

Here, however, I wish to move on to some related questions (which may, to be sure, shed some light on the initial issues). I will then add further coordinates to our palette, which are not often brought into consideration in discussions of the covenant of works.

2. Related questions

Here, then, are our related questions:

What precise function did the obedience of Adam play within the Adamic covenant? This question needs to be addressed more clearly than it often has been. While most historical Reformed theologians have denied that Adam could have merited anything by his obedience, they also have generally tended to assert that Adam’s obedience would have been the ground of his reception of eternal life. But this raises the issue: Is “non-meritorious ground” really a coherent position? It is not entirely clear to me that one can maintain that Adam’s obedience was not meritorious, while also claiming that his obedience was the ground of his receiving the promise. It appears rather difficult in fact to distinguish between works as basis of eternal life, and works as meritorious.
Following closely on (1), is it correct to view the Adamic covenant as an administration by which Adam gained eternal life by works, while the post-fall covenant of grace grants eternal life to faith? It has widely been accepted that the covenant of works entails a principle of works-inheritance, while the covenant of grace entails a principle of faith-inheritance.
Was Adam allowed to boast before God on account of his works? Is it only the fact of sin that excludes boasting upon one’s works (Rom 4.2; cf 3.27), or is such boasting always ruled out by the glory of God and the corresponding Creator/creature distinction? If one says that even Adam was not allowed to boast, does Romans 4.2, then, not disallow the notion that he could have been “justified by works”? In other words: that although obedience was indeed required of him, it is not accurate to characterize that obedience as the ground, or even the instrument, of his right standing with God?

3. Further data requiring an accounting

Here I raise a few additional coordinates in the biblical material that often appear to be overlooked in systematic-theological discussions regarding the covenant of works. Perhaps some of these may assist in shedding at least some light upon our remarks to this point.

If Adam was a covenant head, what implications does that fact have for those who were under his headship? Specifically: had Adam not fallen, would not his headship have meant that all those who were “in him” would have been granted eternal life? If so, what are the implications of that?
The doctrine of the Adamic covenant is often constructed upon parallels drawn with Israel. Paul opposes salvation by law, which would be “inheritance by works,” and the analogy between Adam and Israel (it is thought) implies that Adam was intended to inherit eternal life by works. However, while I grant the coordinates involved in this argument (Adam, Israel, fall), they do not stand alone. It may be simple to construct a theology out of two or three pieces of data; but if there are more coordinates than those, and the construction omits consideration of the rest of the data, the project is skewed. In this case, the Adam-Israel parallels run further and that must be taken into account. While lines between Israel and Adam are usually drawn from Romans 3 and 5, Romans 11 is largely ignored. Yet, Paul quite clearly echoes Romans 5 in chapter 11.11-12, when he posits that Israel’s unbelieving rejection of Christ constitutes her “Adamic fall.” This, however, is a devastating piece of evidence against the notion that the point of Paul’s Adam-Israel parallel is to manufacture a doctrine of works-inheritance. (I.e. “Even as Adam’s works were to be the ground of his inheritance of eternal life, so the law offered a [hypothetical] program whereby Israel’s works were to be the ground of inheritance.”) Why? Because if Israel’s fall consists in unbelief, surely that indicates that so was Adam’s. If Israel’s fall centers upon the personal issue of rejection of her Messiah, what does that say about Adam - remembering, once again, Paul’s intimation in Colossians 1 that Adam was created “in” Christ (noted above)? If this is the case, isn’t the characterization of the Adamic covenant as “law” misleadingly one-sided?
While granting that Adam (having been created perfect) was required to obey God perfectly, it must nonetheless be observed that this dimension receives no attention in the Genesis account itself. If the focus of the Adamic covenant is upon inheriting eternal life on the ground of ethical perfection, this should perhaps strike us as somewhat odd.
In connection with (3), while the prohibition of the tree is usually treated as synecdoche (part for the whole), referring to Adam’s requirement to walk in ethical perfection, it is less usual to draw attention to the fact that the Satanic temptation attacked the goodness and veracity of God; the serpent implied that God did not in fact have the creatures’ best interests in view, and that His warning was untruthful. These factors indicate that common treatments do not lay a heavy enough accent upon the issue of faith and unbelief in connection with the fall of man. Romans 1.18ff, I suggest, supports this thesis. In articulating the downward spiral of fallen man, Paul does not begin with sundry sins, but precisely with the suppression of the truth in unrighteousness, which he terms as failure to give glory to God (1.18-23; contrast with Rom 4.20, which identifies Abraham’s faith as giving glory to God). Paul deals with the sundry sins as divinely-imposed judgment for the basic sin of unbelief (see Rom 1.24ff).

4. Concluding observations

From the above, I suggest that our construction of the Adamic covenant requires re-examination in a number of areas. While there is clearly a contrast between the pre-fall and post-fall situations, the frequently-unused data implies that the Adamic covenant had a great deal more personal and pistic (having to do with faith - Greek pistis) focus than is generally recognized.

Clearly, this little piece is intended to be exploratory, rather than definitive. My concern is to raise matters for discussion which frequently fail to be addressed. If we are to continue to reform our covenant theology according to Scripture, we must continue to listen to Scripture and ensure we are incorporating as much of the data as possible.

Bibliography

Disclaimer: inclusion of material in the bibliography implies neither endorsement of all views expressed in the material, nor that the author of the material endorses (or, if deceased, would have endorsed) the views of this web site. The criterion for inclusion of material in this list is genuine helpfulness to the discussion, not uniformity of viewpoint.

Tim Gallant: “Monocovenantalism? Multiple Covenants, No Adamic Merit.” Another exploratory essay on the matter of merit, arguing that Christ’s merit does not presuppose a meritorious Adamic covenant, but only Adamic demerit.

Tim Gallant: “Paradoxology: The Trinitarian Grounding of Human Faith.” Builds upon the doctrine of the Trinity to show that faith was central to the Adamic covenant, as well as later covenantal arrangements.

Ralph A. Smith: Eternal Covenant: How the Trinity Reshapes Covenant Theology. (Moscow, ID: Canon, 2003.) A very profitable and engaging work, although Smith mistakenly assumes that traditional Reformed theology conceived of the Adamic covenant as meritorious (a position which he emphatically opposes).

Rowland Ward: God & Adam: Reformed Theology and the Creation Covenant. (Wantirna, Australia: New Melbourne Press, 2003.) Very helpful resource for an introduction to the doctrine of the Adamic covenant in historic Reformed theology.

— Tim Gallant

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