SRR #86 | A Biblical Defense For The Covenant of Works Part 2

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone.
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When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the error and combating the error.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.
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We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said,
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Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.
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As opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. It is on.
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We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the podcast.
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My name is Tim and you are listening to Semper Reformanda Radio. So, this is going to be part two in our discussion on the covenant of works.
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And what we're trying to do is give a biblical defense for the covenant of works as it has been defined by Protestant Reformed Orthodoxy.
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Now, just to clarify, we are Reformed Baptists, but everybody else on the network,
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I believe, is a Presbyterian, which would include Timothy Kaufman, Pastor Patrick Hines, and Steve Matthews.
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But Carlos and I are Reformed Baptists, but in this area of theology, the Reformed Baptists hold the same view as the
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Presbyterians. Now, there is a little bit of difference when we get to the covenant of grace, and hopefully we can tackle that in a future episode.
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But we are trying to defend the theological view that God made a covenant with Adam in the
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Garden of Eden. And we noted last time, in part one, that there were entire schools of theology, such as New Covenant Theology, which actually deny that there's a covenant of works.
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Now, let me just also qualify that by saying that not every branch of New Covenant Theology would deny this.
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I know that the Progressive Covenantal guys would hold to some form of an
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Adamic covenant, or a covenant between God and Adam, but they wouldn't necessarily agree with all of its parts as expressed by the
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Reformed Baptists or the Presbyterians. But, for the most part, what we've seen is that many
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New Covenant Theologians do reject the idea that there's any sort of covenant between God and Adam in the
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Garden of Eden. And what we're going to do is we're going to get into the hermeneutics, because what we've heard a lot of New Covenant Theologians say is that we are imposing our theological system onto the text.
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And what we're saying is that if they were consistent with their own professed hermeneutical method of progressive revelation, taking progressive revelation seriously, that they would arrive at the same conclusions that we're arriving, because that's exactly what we're doing.
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We are looking past Genesis to see what God has said about this.
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And obviously we talked about marriage being a covenant. We gave some examples that show that not every covenant has to be labeled as a covenant when it's ratified.
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But God could later, as he's progressively revealing knowledge and truth through scripture, he could later reveal that there was a covenant.
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And we saw that with marriage. So we're going to go ahead and continue. What we're going to do first is play a clip from our old friends at Conversations from the
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Porch just to illustrate, I think, a difference in how we see biblical theology versus systematic theology.
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Now, these guys are not completely against systematic theology, but we do think that they prefer a biblical hermeneutic over a systematic hermeneutic.
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And I know, Carlos, you said that you had some things that you wanted to address in this clip.
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Now, let me go ahead and let everybody know where we're pulling this from. This is from Conversations from the
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Porch, episode number 42, titled, Is Progressive Covenantalism Antinomian?
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An interview with Dr. Stephen Wellham. This is at the 38 minute mark. I believe it's Paul Kaiser who asks the question concerning biblical theology versus systematic theology.
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Let me also point out that these guys are not podcasting anymore, but they are welcome to engage us at any level.
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We certainly want to be respectful. This is not a criticism against them per se.
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We are just simply trying to address the theological difference. We do think there might be a little bit of a theological difference here.
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So let's go ahead and play the clip, and then I'm going to hand it over to Carlos to let me know what he thinks.
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So if I was to put what you just said into a soundbite, would this be an accurate representation that your biblical theology is going to drive your systematic theology?
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Yes, and I think even, and adding even a distinction, biblical theology is going to drive systematic because you can't have theological conclusions without doing justice to the whole
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Bible, which is biblical theology. But systematic theology is different in that it's building on the whole
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Bible, but depending on the doctrine, there are pieces that have to be put together, and some of those pieces are requiring more sort of theological or faith -seeking understanding kind of way of putting things together versus more of a directness, maybe indirect.
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So for instance, in the Doctrine of the Trinity, you get that from the whole Bible. God has unfolded
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His plan. He's revealed Himself across the canon, the coming of Christ, the giving of the
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Spirit. We see that God is a triune God, yet as we think through how the persons relate to one another, there's a lot of vocabulary that is introduced to try to make sense of biblical data.
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It's a little bit different than the Doctrine of the Church. The Doctrine of the Church is much more direct, right? I mean, it's, okay, here's the people of God of the old.
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Here's the New Testament nature of the church. So systematic theology is built off of biblical theology.
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Biblical theology is driving it. It's where, if your theology is true to the Bible, you've got to be true to the whole
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Bible, right, which is biblical theology. Yet certain doctrinal areas, providence, have to wrestle with biblical truths, but then has to sometimes incorporate discussions such as sovereignty, freedom.
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The Bible says God's sovereign. We are free. But what does that look like? How do I make sense of that, especially when, you know, people are lost in love when you say, well, how is
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God providential here? Or a critic comes and says, you know, this is contradictory. It's part of theology's task is to have that not only constructive sense of putting pieces together, but also a defensive sense, an apologetic sense to it, defending the truth.
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And each doctrinal area is different, but you're exactly right. Systematic theology is built off of the whole
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Bible, which is biblical theology. So biblical theology must inform our systematic theological conclusions.
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Right, right. When we first started out and that was the assertion that we made, I mean, we created a firestorm.
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I mean, people were saying, you deny systematic theology, this and that. And how can you even approach theology without systematic theology?
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And we were trying to argue that, hey, we're not throwing out systematic theology. We're just putting it in its proper place.
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And it should get its growth and outworking from the Bible and from the Bible storyline. And yeah, so I'm glad.
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All right. So that was a clip. And Carlos, I know that you had some stuff that you wanted to say about this.
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So I'll just let you take it away. Yeah. So it's really fascinating because this dialogue illustrates one of the major differences between covenant theology and new covenant theology, and also between progressive covenantalism and the other new covenant theology camps.
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And I think, I believe Paul was referring largely to us when we started to criticize them for saying that, you know, your biblical theology should inform your systematic theology and it should drive it and so on and so forth.
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But the reason we were criticizing them for that is not because that statement is wrong per se.
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It's not that that statement is wrong. It's that it's incomplete. It's not the full picture. And so Wellam just, you know, he basically gave a long winded explanation of how it's important for, obviously, for systematic theology to be undergirded by a sound biblical theology.
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But then the interesting thing here is that Wellam has a very,
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Gentrian Wellam, they have a very solid understanding of what biblical and systematic theology are. And I found very little that I disagreed with in his prolegomena in the kingdom through covenant.
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I thought it was excellent. It was outstanding. And I really appreciated what he described as biblical and systematic theology, because what he means by biblical theology is that it's seeking to understand the
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Bible, right? And so all they really had to do was read the first paragraph of the preface of the book.
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And so here's the preface. The design for kingdom through covenant is based on the conviction that biblical and systematic theology go hand in hand.
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To be specific, systematic theology must be based on biblical theology, and biblical theology in turn must be founded upon exegesis that attends meticulously to the cultural, historical setting, linguistic data, literary devices and techniques, and especially the narrative plot structure, that is, the larger story, which the text as a unitary whole entails, and by which it is informed.
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The converse is also true. Exegesis and biblical theology is not an end in itself, but a means to the larger end of doing systematic theology, which simply attempts to bring all of our thought and life captive to Scripture, and thus under the
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Lordship of Christ. So there you have it, folks. This is almost exactly the same thing that we have been saying all along at Semper Reformanda Radio.
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These guys have almost the exact same view that we have about biblical and systematic theology, because you don't stop at biblical theology, and it's not an end in itself.
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I remember conversations from the porch also joking about it one time. I think Pastor Paul made a joke about how if New Covenant theology was to write a systematic theology, it would probably be more like a biblical theology.
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The interesting thing about that is that these guys, progressive covenantalists, that's not their method.
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That's only half of the method that they use. The other half, like I just illustrated, is to show that it's not an end in itself, but it's also seeking to formulate the systematic theology to harmonize everything together.
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Here's another quote that I got from Gentry and Willem, basically a response to one of the reviews of their book.
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They say this, As humans, our minds work by using analysis and synthesis in tandem.
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The same is true in biblical exegesis and theological construction. We create understandings of the whole by dissecting and studying its parts, and conversely, we understand the parts in light of the whole.
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As we go back and forth between analysis and synthesis, we refine our understandings of both the parts and the whole.
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This is what we've been saying all along, and this is what a lot of New Covenant theology proponents deny, or they undermine, or they are inconsistent in.
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They will say, well, biblical theology should drive your systematic theology, but they don't say the converse.
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The converse is what Willem and Gentry emphasize, is that the systematic theology also informs your biblical theology.
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That's why it's so important to draw out the implications of your doctrines, because in doing so, it helps you to see if you're being consistent with the whole of Scripture.
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Because when you don't do that, you don't properly give yourself the ability to tie in together everything as a whole to construct a coherent systematic theology.
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That actually helps you to make sure if your biblical theology is sound. That's one of the tests for knowing that your biblical theology is sound.
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It's not just by checking the immediate context, it's by checking to see if it harmonizes with the rest of your understanding of Scripture as a whole.
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I'm going to reread Blake White's definition of New Covenant theology.
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Blake White says this, There you have it once again.
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There is a clear bias to prefer and to emphasize biblical theology over systematic theology.
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Because they will say, no, we're not against systematic theology. We're not against systematic theology.
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But we just showed how their method actually undermines systematic theology. And not only that, when you're talking about biblical theology,
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Oh man, I just went blank. Shoot. I just went blank. And it was about what we were just talking about.
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Well, that's all right. Let me go ahead and jump in here because I'm sure that you're going to remember once we continue with this.
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What we want to drive at here and what we're trying to submit is that in order for our
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New Covenant theologian friends to take their principle of progressive revelation seriously, they would need to have a stronger emphasis on systematic theology.
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But that's really kind of not what we see. Instead, we see that they emphasize biblical theology, sometimes to a fault.
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And this brings me to point number four in Robert Raymond's systematic theology, in which he's giving an exegetical basis for the presence of a covenant in Genesis.
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So on page 430, point number four, he writes, Now, I know that,
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Carlos, we're not going to get into all of those passages of Scripture, but this is basically looking to the rest of Scripture to see what it says about Genesis.
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Because a lot of times when we're talking about the covenant of works, we see a lot of our New Covenant theologian friends point back to Genesis and demand for answers in Genesis and say, where in Genesis does it say that there's a covenant?
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And what we're saying is that you need to take progressive revelation seriously because we're not just going to get stuck in Genesis.
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So, Carlos, I know that you wanted to go over Romans chapter 5. Right. And so let me go ahead and give you an opportunity to do that.
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Maybe you'll remember what you were going to say. Yeah, thank you. So now I remember what I was going to bring up previously.
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And this is the point about regarding New Covenant theology proponents that they tend to resist systematic theology.
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And one other manifestation of that, aside from what we've already covered, is the fact that they're not necessarily against coming up with a system.
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But the problem that they have is that a lot of them tend to undermine the use of logic to a certain extent.
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And you and Owen covered in an entire episode basically reading quotes by New Covenant theologians like John Riesinger, basically undermining to a large part the role of logic and how integral it is to theology and understanding the
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Bible. Because what they tend to do is they say, well, and this is when we also criticized the
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David Gay quote about how New Covenant theology is not a system. And what they mean by that, what they really mean by that is that, well, it can be a system for you.
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But don't impose that on me. Like it might be your system, but they basically don't want anything that's a system placed on anything that's higher than a church.
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So anything that's beyond the level of just a church, they're very uncomfortable with imposing, quote unquote, a theological system.
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And so that's a major problem. Because if your conclusions are valid, if your theological conclusions are valid, then it is binding.
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It is true. It's not just true for you, but not for me, because I have to make my own theological conclusions and they may be different from yours.
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That's not how this works. And so that's another major problem, a major difference that underlies the people who have a more fuller, consistent method of theology, of doing theology, like the
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Reformed tradition and like these progressive covenantal guys. But I want to have some fun here.
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For those of you who followed us earlier in our earlier episodes and when we started talking about New Covenant theology,
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I want to throw down the gauntlet again one more time. And this time it's about obviously what we've been talking about, the covenant of works.
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And in order to kick this off, why don't you play the clip, Tim, of the conversations from the porch interview with Doug Gooden?
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Yeah, and let me go ahead and point out that this was the same clip that we played in part one. We're just going to play it again because this was really what we set out to do, is to take on the challenge that Pastor Doug Gooden has laid out before us.
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And you'll hear that in a minute if you didn't hear part one. But this is
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Conversations from the Porch, episode number 52. And the title of that episode is
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Interview with Pastor Doug Gooden, Cross Your Crown Ministries. And this is right around the one hour and four minute mark.
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I love to talk. I love to talk theology. I love to talk— You're in the right place, then. Yeah, I see that.
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Well, I've got a question here, Chris. Watch this. Garden covenant or no garden covenant?
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No. No. All right! God! That's from Missouri originally.
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Show me. Oh, no. It's not there.
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Yeah, it's the only covenant in the Bible that the Bible doesn't call a covenant. You don't know that, Paul? Oh, man.
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There we go again. Okay, well, I'll give you—let's say there is a covenant. What are the terms?
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What are the stipulations? What's the sign? The oath. Oh, that's good.
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That's good. What did God promise? He always makes promises. I mean, I still have not seen why our new covenant brothers, why they feel the need to go there, because I don't see how it helps anybody.
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Yeah, yeah. That's good. That's good. I don't know. I think
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Long has some good argumentation. From the Bible? Yeah. Oh, no!
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Oh, no! Okay, so that was the clip, and just two things right there.
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We do believe that this is a covenant that is named as a covenant. We see that in Hosea 6 -7.
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And we are making our case from the Bible. So even though Pastor Doug Gooden made that comment about making our case from the
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Bible, that's exactly what we're doing. We've not really made a case from anything but the
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Scriptures. So, Carlos, I see that you're chomping at the bit. I know that you want to throw down the gauntlet, so I'll let you take it away.
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Yeah, so here's the thing. Let's throw down the gauntlet. And I'm going to do it this way.
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I'm going to issue out a challenge and then satisfy the terms of that challenge, speaking in covenant language, no pun intended.
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So I can actually prove to you that there is a covenant of works from the
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Bible with two Bible words to top it off. Bible words. A simple
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Bible phrase. You can prove it with a simple Bible phrase that you can find in the
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Bible. And I want people who are listening, our listeners, to think about this for a second.
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Think about what that would be, what those two words would be, especially New Covenant folks. Just think about that.
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And when you've thought about it, you can pause it. When you've thought about it, you can continue playing.
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So, Tim, what do you say to that? What do you think that is? Well, hold on, hold on. Let me do this.
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Let me play some music for our listeners and give them a few seconds to think about it.
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Nice. All right, time's up.
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So, yeah, I already know what it is because we talked about it. So I'll just let you take it away.
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Right. So this Bible phrase is the simple phrase, in Adam. This simple
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Bible phrase illustrates, it proves to you from the Bible that there was a covenant with Adam made in the garden.
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So let's digest that a little bit. This is what's so disappointing with New Covenant folks who talk about this issue.
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You heard Doug Gooden talk about how, I don't see a covenant in Genesis. You've heard the conversations from the porch repeatedly say,
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I don't see a covenant in Genesis. You've heard even their interview with Jeff Volker. He says the exact same thing.
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I don't see a covenant in Genesis. But the problem is that they're going against their own method, their own method of theology.
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And just to rehearse what I read previously on Blake White's definition of New Covenant theology.
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New Covenant theology is a biblical theological system that strives to use biblical language when possible, takes the progressive nature of revelation seriously.
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Okay. Takes the progressive nature of revelation seriously. And with that point, we agree. And because of that point, we're calling out
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New Covenant theologians who say that there is no covenant in Genesis. Because you're not supposed to just go to Genesis and try to hypothesize about, well, there's no covenant there because there's not this and that and the other.
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When you still have the entire rest of the Bible to account for. Like, for example,
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Romans 5, 12 -21. Or 1 Corinthians 15 where it talks about in Adam, in Christ, the first Adam, the last
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Adam. See, and when people start really digging into what that phrase means, what in Adam means, you have a very limited number of options.
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And there's only one option that actually makes sense when you really start to look at it. When you look at it carefully.
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And so it was actually pretty interesting because, and I don't know if you want to play the clip.
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We might not have to play the clip unless you want to with Jeff Volker. But Jeff actually brings up those verses.
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And he said, well, if you were going to see something, you would see it in Romans 5 when Paul is talking about it.
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It's like, well, yeah, that's what he's talking about. And that's exactly what he's saying. I mean, so here's what we'll do next.
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Let's go to Romans 5 and chop it up. Okay, so Romans 5.
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Let me see if there's anything else that I need to bring up before I keep going. So Romans 5, right?
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We are in a very critical passage in the Bible when all of Romans is basically giving you the big picture perspective of the
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Bible. It's almost like a confessional, systematic overview of the entire counsel of God being presented in one succinct, coherent letter.
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And in Romans 5, he's talking about a very important concept in the Bible. I'm going to start in verse 12 with the
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New King James. So, Verse 15,
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Verse 16, Verse 18, continuing, So that's obviously the major passage that we're discussing.
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And then Robert Raymond listed a few other passages that I wanted to review as well. One of them being 1
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Corinthians 15, starting in verse 20.
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So there you have it. The verse is so explicitly clear. There's an obvious parallel that Paul is making between in Adam and in Christ, right?
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So when you're making a parallel, there has to be an exact univocal point of contact between those two comparisons.
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If one of those is not univocal, or in other words, it's not equivocal, it's univocal, meaning they both have the same meaning in both contexts, then you are not properly understanding the comparison that is being made.
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Okay? Yeah, there has to be univocal elements in each one of them to tie them together. Exactly.
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So like if you were going to say an apple and orange are similar. Because they're both a fruit.
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They're both a fruit. They're both round. They both are edible. Those are univocal elements that tie those two things together to be a parallel.
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And we see the same thing here between Christ as the second Adam, and it says it explicitly. He's the second
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Adam. Right. And the first Adam. Yeah. Right. So let's unpack this a little bit more.
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What does that mean then? What is that univocal point of contact between in Adam and in Christ?
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Okay? And there's been different interpretations of that throughout the history of the church. And so I'm going to read a commentary by William Barclay on his commentary on Romans.
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And I don't think that he was a believer, but he has some insightful things here and there. But just be warned, he's not somebody that we would recommend or endorse because I don't think he was a believer.
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But here he illustrates some of those, and you'll see why to some extent when I read here.
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So I'm going to read on page 79 of his letter, commentary to the letter, daily study
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Bible commentary to the letter to the Romans. So Paul says that all men sinned in Adam.
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If we are ever to understand Paul's thought, we must be quite sure of what Paul means, and we must be quite sure that Paul meant what he said.
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All through the history of the Christian thinking, there have been efforts to interpret this conception of the connection between Adam's sin and mankind in different ways.
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Number one, the passage has been taken to mean that each man is his own Adam. This really means that just as Adam sinned, all men have sinned, but that there is no real connection between the sin of Adam and the sin of mankind.
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Other than that, it could be said that Adam's sin is typical of the sin of all mankind. So this is a very interesting first view.
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I believe it's very similar to the SBC traditionalist view, who deny the imputation of Adam's guilt, sin guilt, to his posterity, to all of humanity, which is a very dangerous thing to do.
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A lot of Arminians tend to do that because they deny that we are responsible for another man's sin.
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And so the Bible says very clearly, in Adam all die. There's no escaping that.
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By the disobedience of one man led to condemnation to all men.
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Before we had done anything, we were condemned in Adam. That's exactly what the verse means.
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You cannot read that any other way. You will see, I think
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I have seen some New Covenant theologians deny the imputation of Adam's guilt. They don't believe that Adam's sin guilt was imputed to all mankind.
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And that's a serious problem. So the second view is continuing Barclay's commentary.
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There has been what has been called the legal interpretation. This interpretation would hold that Adam was the representative of mankind and that the human race shares in the deed of its representative.
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But a representative must be chosen by the people he represents. And in no sense can we say that of Adam.
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So this is really funny. He basically lists this view as an incorrect view because we did not get to choose
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Adam. And so obviously he has a very Arminian bent to this. There's a very Arminian bent to denying or undermining or not accepting these pivotal doctrines in the
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Bible. Because it's very much a tendency for somebody who affirms free will to say, well, it should be my choice to decide who gets to represent me in that covenant.
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But do you see any problems with that Tim or that objection? One of the obvious ones is that God is the one who made the covenant.
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He's the one who imposed the terms. He's the one who made the covenant. He's the one who chose the representatives.
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And he's the one who says whatever. He can do whatever he wants with us. We need to tie in the bigger picture, obviously, to the fact that we are the vessels and he is the potter.
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We are the clay. He is the potter. And taking a very Arminian notion of we have a right to choose our own representative.
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That's a very American legal system notion of objection. Yeah, we didn't vote for him.
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Exactly. Yeah, you didn't vote for him. So that view can't be correct. It's like, obviously, that has nothing to do with anything that the
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Bible says about that. That's a ridiculous objection because it's unfounded in Scripture. There's nothing. The Bible makes it very clear.
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And we don't get to choose our Savior either. I mean, right. And then, yeah, exactly.
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And not only that, but then what are you going to do when like he wins a popular vote, but then the
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Electoral College votes for him? Would he then not represent the people that didn't vote for him?
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I guess not. I mean, the people that hate Trump and say he's not my president,
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I guess that's where he would be. He's not my Adam. No, yeah. I didn't vote for him.
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It's very convenient because people don't want to be accountable for somebody else's sin. But at the same time, they have no problem believing in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.
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And it's like, well, you didn't get to choose that representative either. Right. God is the one who made that disposition and made that possible and who chose you, for those of you who are
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Arminian. But anyway, we continue. So we're going to obviously touch on the second point in more depth because that's obviously the point.
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That's the view, basically, the view of the Reformed faith. Here's the third view. There is the interpretation that what we inherit from Adam is the tendency to sin.
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That is true enough, but that is not what Paul meant. It would not, in fact, suit his argument at all.
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So that's basically inheriting the sin nature, which actually is one of the consequences of the fall.
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We didn't just inherit the sin guilt of Adam. We inherited the sin nature of his decision to break
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God's covenant because God cursed the earth. And we also inherit that sinful nature from Adam.
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And so here's the fourth view. The only possible interpretation of the passage is what is called the realistic interpretation.
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That because of the solidarity of the human race, all mankind literally and actually sinned in Adam.
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This was not an idea that was strange to a Jew. It was the actual belief of the Jewish thinkers. The writer of Second Esdras is quite clear about it.
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Quote, Another quote.
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That's verse 321. I'm going to keep reading here.
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See, that's actually pretty interesting right there.
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It was even a Jewish interprets view that if Adam had not sinned, he would have become immortal.
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So this is not originating with covenant theology or with the reformed thinkers. This goes all the way back to Jewish thinkers.
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And so death came into this world as a consequence of sin. Sirach 223 writes,
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A woman was the beginning of sin, and through her all died. The book of wisdom has it.
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God created man for immortality and made him the image of his own proper nature. But by the envy of the devil, death entered into the world.
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In Jewish thought, sin and death are integrally connected. This is what
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Paul is getting at in the involved and difficult line of thought in verses 12 -14. We may trace this thought in these verses in a series of ideas.
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1. Adam sinned because he broke a direct commandment of God, the commandment not to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree.
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And because Adam sinned, Adam, who was meant to be immortal, died. The law did not come until the time of Moses.
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Now, if there is no law, there can be no breach of the law. That is to say, if there is no law and no commandment, there can be no sin.
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Therefore, the men who lived between Adam and Moses did in fact sin. But it was not reckoned against them because there was as yet no law.
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And they could not be condemned for breaking a law which did not exist. And so, the third point.
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2. But in spite of the fact that sin could not be reckoned to them, they still died. Death reigned over them, although they could not be accused of breaking a nonexistent law.
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Point number four. 3. Why then did they die? They died because they had sinned in Adam. It was their involvement in the sin of Adam that caused their deaths, although there was no law for them to break.
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That, in fact, is Paul's proof that all men did sin in Adam. And so, here
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Barclay is giving his view. And some things he summarizes well. Some things he gets completely wrong.
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The first point was actually pretty good. That Adam sinned because he broke the commandment.
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And then the second point was the fact that where there is no law, there is no sin.
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But nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses. And that's why infants still die prior to committing any personal sin.
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Because they are dead in Adam. They are suffering the consequence of Adam violating the covenant of works.
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And so, that's another problem with the Arminian view. And with some NCT proponents who hold to this view, that the sin guilt is not inherited, only the sinful nature.
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But the problem with that, obviously, is that why do infants die? Why do people who have not committed any personal sin still die?
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And that is because they are dead in Adam. Because of the fact that Adam was our legal representative, and therefore his consequences apply to us as those who were represented by him in that covenant that he broke.
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And he was saying that death could not be...
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There was obviously a law, right? It wasn't explicitly revealed.
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And in the Reformed tradition, it was actually... And I wish
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I had the catechism question where they explain this. But in the Reformed faith, historically has taught that God did not just reveal that one commandment to not eat of the forbidden fruit.
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And a lot of New Covenant theologians get this wrong as well. It's ridiculous to say that. Obviously, it was wrong to commit adultery, to kill
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Adam, or to kill Eve, and so on and so forth. The moral law was always binding, and it was always there, right?
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And if you remember my dialogue that I had with Lewis Lyons, I brought this up to him, because there is a tendency in New Covenant theology to emphasize that law is inextricably tied to the covenant.
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And that's why they argue that because the covenant of Moses is over, therefore the law that was tied to that covenant is over.
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But the problem with that is that you still have the moral law to account for. And I know they go by different terms, and they have different ways of explaining it.
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Some of them are similar, some not so much. But in the Reformed tradition, the moral law is that which has always been binding at all times, right?
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It's always been binding at all times, and that is what the Reformed faith has described as being summarized in the
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Ten Commandments, and summarized even more so by Christ as the two great commandments, to love God and to love your neighbor.
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So those commandments have always been binding on human beings, because God instilled that. He revealed that to Adam, and it was innately imparted to us in our conscience.
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And Romans talks about this. That is why we are also without excuse, because we do know. We do know
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God. We do know His law consciously, innately. So what does this bring us to?
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I've heard a lot of some of these New Covenant proponents talk about how they believe that they take a similar view to the fourth perspective that Barclay talks about.
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That we literally sinned in Adam because we were physically present in him.
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And the only problem with that is, now like what we just talked about, what applies to the one has to apply to the other.
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And that's the problem with that view. It cannot apply to Christ, because we are not physically in Christ.
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We are not descended from Christ, because obviously Christ had no children. He had no kids. New Covenant theology has a major problem now, because the only way to really make sense of the entire scope of what
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Scripture has to say about this, not just what Genesis says, but what also Hosea says, what also
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Romans says, what Corinthians says, what the New Testament says, about us being in Adam.
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The only way you can make sense of that, is the fact that we were legally covenantally represented in the garden by Adam.
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And so again, it's a very simple, this is not that difficult, but there's such a strong tendency in New Covenant theology to resist this, because they have such a strong bias against it, that they don't want to sound like covenant theologians when you're exegeting these passages.
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And it's so funny, because the ones who do, like the Kingdom Through Covenant guys, like the progressive covenantalist guys, like even
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Gary Long, to some extent, as far as I've heard. I haven't read his stuff, so I can't know for sure, but we've been reading
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Kingdom Through Covenant, and that's why their view is so similar, because they are much more consistent in their principle of using biblical and systematic theology in such a way that both inform the other.
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That it's not a one -directional, from biblical to systematic, but it's bi -directional, from biblical to systematic, and systematic to biblical, so that you harmonize a coherent view of Scripture.
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And so when you do that, and when you account for everything, the only way that that makes any sense, is that in Adam, means that we were covenantally bound and represented by Adam.
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The only way you can have a representative, a legal representative in Scripture, is by way of a covenant.
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If you want to take exception to that, name one, because every single case in which there was a representative that God has instituted, it was always by way of a covenant.
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You have the obvious example with Christ. Christ as a mediator, right? He's the mediator of the new covenant, and all who are in Christ are covenantally in Christ, and therefore are forgiven and pardoned from the violation of the covenant that was broken in Adam.
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Yeah, I think that's a really good point, that in Christ means that we're covenantally in Christ, so why would in Adam mean anything different than that?
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And we see the parallels between Christ and Adam. I mean, Satan came to tempt
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Adam, and he fell. And Satan came to tempt Jesus, and he didn't fall.
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And so it's really interesting that you use in Adam to make a defense for the covenant of works.
45:06
Right. And so, Carlos, let's wrap it up with this. What is the consequence,
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I think, of denying the covenant of works? Well, I still wanted to touch on some points here, because one of the challenges that I wanted to issue out is, or one of the questions
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I wanted to bring up is, are you guilty of your dad's sin? No, obviously not. And why not?
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Why are we not guilty of our dad's sin, but we are guilty of Adam's sin? Because Adam is our federal head.
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Exactly. Federal means covenantal head, so Adam was our federal head. He represented us in the garden.
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And that's why we are not guilty of our dad's sin, but we are guilty of Adam's sin.
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And so you have to tie that in together very carefully. And I want to help some, for those
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New Covenant Theology guys who are listening, I want to help you guys out and read once again from Peter Gentry and Steve Willems' Kingdom Through Covenant.
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In his third point, he says this, Biblically and theologically, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of the
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Adam -Christ typological relationship for understanding the storyline of Scripture. See Romans 5, 12 -21, 1
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Corinthians 15, 20 -23, and Hebrews 2, 5 -18. Scripture is clear that all human beings fall under the representative headship of two people,
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Adam and Christ. Adam represents all that is tied to the Old Creation and this present age, characterized by sin, death, and judgment.
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Christ represents all that is associated with the New Creation and the New Covenant, and from the perspective of the
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Old Testament prophets, the age to come, characterized by salvation, life, and restoration of what was lost in the fall.
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This is why Scripture ultimately subsumes Jew and Gentile under Adam, so that anyone who is in Adam, given
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Adam's disobedience, now comes into this world dead in their sins and under the judicial sentence of God.
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In this way, Adam's headship has the deeper privilege of more than ordinary fatherhood.
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It also includes the dignity of defining what it means to be human, for he stands not merely as our physical or seminal head, but also as our covenantal head.
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Being human, then, is equivalent to bearing Adam's image. 1 Corinthians 15, 49.
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Now, in light of the fall, being in Adam is equivalent to being part of the Old Creation and an age associated with and characterized by sin, death, and judgment, while being in Christ is equivalent to being part of the
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New Creation and an age associated with salvation and life. As Doug Moo says,
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All people, Paul teaches, stand in relationship to one of two men, whose actions determine the eternal destiny of all who belong to them.
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Either one belongs to Adam and is under sentence of death because of his sin or disobedience, or one belongs to Christ and is assured of eternal life because of his righteous act or obedience.
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The actions of Adam and Christ, then, are similar in having epochal significance, even though, as Moo rightly notes, there is massive discontinuity between these two men in terms of their identity and actions.
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The two men are not equal in powers, and Christ's act is able completely to overcome the effects of Adam's.
48:26
So, there you have it. It's so clearly laid out by even the progressive covenantalist guys that that's what in Christ means.
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That's what this book is arguing. This New Covenant theology, Kingdom Through Covenant, is arguing that in Christ means to be covenantally in Christ.
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And therefore, conversely, to be in Adam means to be covenantally in Adam.
48:54
And so, that's exactly what those parallels are. The parallels are so explicit once you realize that there's only one way to understand those passages that talk about in Adam all die, in Christ all will be made alive.
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For as by the death and the trespass of one which led to condemnation, so the righteousness and the obedience of the other led to salvation and life to the many, to the others.
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And to go back to the clip that we played earlier by Doug Gooden, he was saying, what are the terms?
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And this is another thing that we need to point out. Just because the terms are not explicitly laid out as clearly as they would like in Genesis or even in the
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New Testament does not mean that there is no covenant. God does not have to, God is not obligated to reveal what
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He doesn't want to reveal. He can reveal exactly what He wants and how He wants to reveal it. But He has revealed, in the
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New Covenant especially, these passages in such a way that they can only be understood in one way.
49:55
When you take into account the immediate context and the context of the Bible as a whole. Right, when you apply your own hermeneutical method of progressive revelation.
50:04
Exactly, when you're consistent with your own supposed view of taking the progressive nature of revelation seriously.
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And accounting for what exactly it means to be in Adam. And so, to wrap that up, what are the terms?
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The terms are very clear. In Adam all die. Those were the terms. If you disobey, you die.
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That's very clear. In Adam all die. And consequently, because Christ satisfied that disobedience.
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I mean, read the passage. We just read it. I'm going to just re -read it.
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So Romans, going back to Romans 5 .12. Let me move the screen. So Romans 5 .12.
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Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin. And thus death spread to all men because of all sin.
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For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who was a type of him who was to come.
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But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man
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Jesus Christ abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned.
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For the judgment which came from the one offense resulted in condemnation.
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And this is talking about condemnation to all of those who were represented in Adam. But the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification.
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For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one
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Jesus Christ. Therefore, as through the one man's offense, judgment came to all men resulting in condemnation.
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That could not be any clearer right there. Judgment came to all men by way of covenant violation.
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Even so, through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men resulting in justification of life.
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For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by the one man's obedience many will be made righteous.
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Those terms could not be any clearer. The terms are right there. And this is another thing that they're confusing.
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Because in Genesis, there's a clear foreshadowing. There's a suspenseful element of mystery that's not revealed until the
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New Testament. The terms of promise and eternal life are not as explicit in the old covenant in the book of Genesis because obviously
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God preordained for Adam to fall. But also because the one who was going to satisfy those terms was none other than Christ himself.
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And that's exactly what Romans 5 is explaining to us. Those were the terms. Obedience will give you eternal life and righteousness.
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Disobedience will give you death and condemnation. That is what Romans 5 is explaining to you.
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It's explaining to you the terms of the covenant of works and how Adam failed miserably and how Christ succeeded perfectly.
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And that is a parallel that is also drawn between the desert temptation of Adam I'm sorry, the desert temptation of Christ and how he succeeded in the temptation whereas in Paradise Adam and Eve failed miserably.
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And so it could not be any clear when you tie this all together and you see how there's no other way to understand this.
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And the thing is that those objections really are not that difficult to answer.
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They're not. When you say what was the promise? The promise was eternal life. Exactly.
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Obedience, righteousness and eternal life. Exactly. Which he failed to accomplish. Which is why
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Jesus, the second Adam, had to come and succeed.
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So I want to read from an article on the Trinity Foundation and we can go ahead and wrap it up here because we've gone a little bit longer than we normally do but we think that it's necessary because it's really
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I think detrimental to the faith that this is being rejected by so many people out there.
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The rejections are pretty shallow and superficial but Robbins writes in an article titled
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Pied Piper, One consequence of this denial of the covenant of works is that if Adam was not a party to the covenant of works as these men assert then neither was
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Christ the second or last Adam. Therefore Christ could not, did not and was not supposed to pay the debts of and earn salvation for his people.
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As the second and last Adam Christ did not by his active and passive obedience fulfill the law of God, pay the debts of his people and merit their salvation.
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Thus the denial of the covenant of works is an attack on the justice of God on the imputation of Adam's sin to his children on the active obedience of Christ on the imputation of Christ's active obedience and righteousness to believers.
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By denying that Adam and Christ as federal heads of their representative races were subject to the covenant of works before the court of God's justice not his grace, each
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Adam being required to fulfill the terms of the covenant, one failing miserably and the other succeeding perfectly the neolegalists put all believers on probation and make their salvation depend on their own evangelical obedience.
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Now, let me point out that a lot of the new covenant theologians have not gone that far because they've not,
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I think worked out the implications of denying this view of a covenant between God and man.
56:00
But here's the problem is that the heretics, first of all let me back up here, new covenant theology is still developing as a system the heretics are going to come in and they're going to work out these implications for you and you may reject the implications because you're inconsistent and you're resisting the logically necessary implications, but the heretics are going to come in there and they're going to work out these implications for you and I do believe that eventually if this is not remedied that there will be groups within new covenant theology camps that are heretical.
56:45
That's already happened. Yeah. That's what that's what fourth stream is and that's why Okay. Yeah, that's exactly why and we've pointed this out already in our earlier episodes,
56:54
I mean that's the problem, it's not as bad on their part because they claim ignorance and whereas people like Piper and these other guys like these other people who deny the covenant of works, they have a more explicit way of drawing this stuff out and so when they deny it they also see what happens like what
57:15
Robin says when you start denying the covenant of works within a relatively reformed framework you run into the trouble of becoming a neolegalist because you don't have somebody who satisfied the obedience that Christ satisfied on your behalf and so when that happens and people like Piper deny the works principle as well and a lot of new covenant theologians from what
57:37
I've seen they deny the works principle not just the covenant of works but the works principle in the
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Bible that if you that you can earn something by working for it and obeying
57:48
God We'll probably have to cover that in another one because I've heard some of them deny the act of obedience of Christ and that is really problematic.
57:58
Yeah yeah that's a very exactly and that's very directly tied to this so and obviously as you can see we've had a lot of stuff that we wanted to talk about and I hope you bear with us and I hope you new covenant theologians take a careful listen to this and I hope you consider really consider what it means to be an
58:21
Adam and look at what we've laid out and even from your own authors coming from your own your own backyard.
58:28
Yeah and we've got nothing against conversations from the porch. This is a theological issue.
58:34
It's a theological disagreement. I think that we can be mature about it and not get hurt feelings over the fact that we're saying you're wrong so.
58:44
Right we're here to sharpen each other. Iron sharpens iron. That's what we're here to do and so what happens when iron sharpens iron?
58:53
Sparks fly. And it gets hot. Exactly. It gets and so there's a lot of heat and there's a lot of sparks.
59:02
And some people can't take the heat but hey I mean that's the only way you grow so. Snowflakes snowflakes can't take the heat.
59:09
Yeah usually. So the that they melt like wax but the. No they melt like snowflakes
59:15
Right they melt like water. How about that? Water doesn't melt. Water boils.
59:20
They melt into water. Whatever. They melt into water. So so yeah. So I'm very excited
59:26
Tim. I'm very excited that we got to do this. I know it's been a while. I hope to in the near future maybe have a little bit more time to get a few more episodes because we have a lot of them lined up and I don't want to give any false hopes to people though because anything can happen.
59:42
Yeah we know about your situation. We're not committing you to any future episodes.
59:48
Obviously if you're able if you have a week off or something or some time off from work and you're able to sift through some of this stuff then you're always welcome to come on the podcast.
01:00:00
So I want to say thank you to all of our listeners and Carlos we will be praying for you.
01:00:07
Yeah thank you. And your situation and just wish everybody a good week.
01:00:13
God bless. Bye. Trinity Foundation.
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