Quote:
Originally Posted by AV1611  Quote:
Originally Posted by BertMulder What we do deny is the view that Scripture teaches that Adam could have merited heavenly, eternal life by his obedience. | This is where I disagree with Hoeksema and the PRC. |
It was for me always difficul to understand, how Adam could merrited heaven ?
Thomas Goodwin:
Adam could not earn a condition of a higher rank, nor by all his works have brought any greater preferment than what he was created in. To compass it was ultra suam sphaerum, above his sphere; he could never have done it. As, for instance, he could not have attained that state in heaven which the angels enjoy. What says Christ? “When you have done all you can, say, You are unprofitable servants” (Luke 17:10). This he could no more do than other creatures by keeping those their ordinances can merit to be “translated into the glorious liberty” which they wait for, and shall have at the latter day. The moon, though she keep all her motions set her by God never so regularly, yet she cannot thereby attain to the light of the sun as a new reward thereof. And thus no more can any pure creature of itself, by all its righteousness, obtain in justice a higher condition to itself. And therefore the angels, by all their own grace, have not to this day earned a better condition than they were created in.-Works, vol. 5, pp. 82-83