I just finished the first volume 1 (of the 3) of Herman Hoeksema - The triple knowledge (3 vol.) commentary on the Heidelberg Cathechism.

It's really excellent !!!!!!!

Herman Hoeksema belongs to me favourite theologions (expect his view on paedobaptism ofcourse!).

Reformed Free Publishing Association

I can't wait to started now with volume 2!

Are there any more Hoeksema fans?

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* Ralph Wilms (7-10-1974)
* Church : Christengemeente Roermond (The Netherlands)
* Credobaptist who hold towards Covenant Theology
* Husband of Reena & father of Naomie and Gideon
* 1729 Goat Yard Declaration of Faith
* 1646 & 1689 Baptist Confession of faith
* 1595 The Lambeth Articles
* 1618-1619 The Canons of Dordt

Indeed, though I think that his denial of the legal aspect of the covenant is problematic.

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Richard
CofE
UK

Would you elaborate on this more, brother.

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Stephen Welch
PCA Teaching Elder
Nova Scotia

Sure, he sees covenant as an end in itself as opposed to a means to an end. This is done by defining covenant as a relationship and denies that there are conditions to the relationship. His favourite example is that of marriage, i.e. marriage is not the ceremony but the life lived together in mutual friendship and communion. He seems to overlook the fact that the friendship within marriage is bounded by obedience.

He then rejects the traditional conception of the covenant of works and the pactum salutis. See:

The Covenant: God's Tabernacle With Men
Standard Bearer - V.80 - I.5 - Feature Article - The Covenant Concept (1) By Rev. Herman Hoeksema
Standard Bearer - V.80 - I.6 - Feature Article - The Covenant Concept (2) By Rev. Herman Hoeksema

In addition to that, Hoeksema denies common grace, and is a hyper-Calvinist. However, he is still worth reading, and has many excellently clear and good things.

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com
http://brahmsgreenglove.blogspot.com
http://accenttranslation.blogspot.com
Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Depends on your definition of hyper-calvinist...

The denial of common grace is Biblical, and thus a strength..

Richard, why do you think his covenant view is problematic though?

(Although he further developed this view, it is not unique to Hoeksema. You find many elements of this covenant view in divines such as Witsius and Brakel)

Ralph, you and I ought to have a discussion on infant baptism sometime...

Why, for instance, you would think that God would have such a change in the covenant, and not a word in Scripture about it...

Referring to the fact that children were included in the covenant already in the Old Testament, and had the sacrament of circumcision administered. Continuity in the covenant would of necessity dictate also, likewise, that the sacrament of the covenant in the New Testament has to be administered to the children of believers.

Sorry if this is offtopic...

This is not intended, and as such should not be construed as an attack on our baptist brethren...

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Bert Mulder
Elder of the First Protestant Reformed Church of Edmonton
Edmonton Alberta Canada

No one denies that the covenant establishes a relationship. Note Dickson, "The Covenanting of God with man, tended of its own nature to man's good and happiness...because a singular respect and honour was put upon man, when he was made a confederate friend of God: for, if it be an honour to a mean and poor man to be joined with a King or Prince in a formal bond of mutual friendship, how much greater honour is it unto man, to be joined in a bond of mutual love and friendship with God?" And it can be argued that essence of covenant is relationship and communion but to ignore the rest of what Scripture teaches on the covenant is not the best way to approach things. Whilst it is common for the PRC to argue that Hoeksema's view was just a development on Witsius etc if you read them you find a very different conception of the covenant.

Hoeksema's denial of the covenant of works is very problematic on a number of grounds. Most importantly it ignores the law element of the covenant made with Adam, the law which Christ kept for us and so merited us eternal life.

Also, it was wrong to say that the traditional view ignores the place of the Holy Ghost in the pactum salutis and to say that when Jesus addressed his Father he is speaking to the Triune God as opposed to his Father the first person of the Godhead does not do full justice to the NT texts.

I would suggest a read of John Gill:
7. Of the Everlasting Covenant of Grace, Between the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
8. Of the Part Which the Father Takes in the Covenant.
9. Of the Part the Son of God, the Second Person, Has Taken in the Covenant.
10. Of Christ, as the Covenant-Head of the Elect.
11. Of Christ, the Mediator of the Covenant.
12. Of Christ, the Surety of the Covenant.
13. Of Christ, the Testator of the Covenant.
14. Of the Concern the Spirit of God Has in the Covenant of Grace.


And of David Dickson:
Therapeutica Sacra: Chapter 4: Of the Covenant of Redemption.
Therapeutica Sacra: Chapter 5: Of the Covenant of Works.
Therapeutica Sacra: Chapter 6: Of the Covenant of Grace.

I think it is more accurate to say that he is a high-Calvinist, rather than a hyper-Calvinist, as he still believes in human responsibility.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

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Kevin
Far East
Deacon, Int'l Church

I think I remember him flatly denying him being a hyper calvinist...I'll see if I can look it up.

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Chris Mangum
Presbyterian Reformed Church of Charlotte
student, GPTS
.357 Mangum

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. James 1:27

Believe this article by Prof. Engelsma may be useful in this discussion:

http://www.prca.org/prtj/nov2006.pdf

In it you can read that nowhere do we deny a covenant relationship between God and Adam.

What we do deny is the view that Scripture teaches that Adam could have merited heavenly, eternal life by his obedience.

Nowhere do we deny the federal and organic responsibility of us all in Adam, for eating of the tree. As such, our original sin is also to be repented of.

Richard, I did not say that the teaching of Witsius was the same as Hoeksema. But Hoeksema is standing on the shoulders of Witsius and Brakel.

I know that you don't deny a covenant was established between God and Adam but it is precisely the rejection of it being a covenant of works that is the problem as you note by saying;

This is where I disagree with Hoeksema and the PRC.

Not really, at least in any meaningful sense. He completely rejects their views of covenant calling it unbiblical. Have a read of this and then re-read Hoeksema.

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

Witsius writes:

IX. It still remains doubtful, whether the life promised to Adam upon his perseverance was to be enjoyed in paradise, or in heaven. The latter appears more probable.

1st. Because paradise is in scripture represented as a type of heaven. and heaven itself is called paradise, Luke xxiii 43. by that exchange of names which is very common between a sacrament, or sign, and the thing signified thereby. But is it in the least probable, that paradise should be made a sacrament after man’s ejectment?

2dly. Is it fit that man when raised to consummate happiness should reside there, where God does most brightly display the rays of his glorious majesty; which doubtless he does in heaven, where he has fixed his throne, Isa. lxvi. 1.

3dly. As the earthly paradise was furnished with all the delights and pleasures appertaining to this animal life, of which there is no necessity in that most perfect and immediate fruition of God, all that external entertainment being in the highest degree excluded thence; heaven ought to be deemed a much more suitable habitation for glorified man than the earthly paradise. However, we would not deny, that happiness does not depend on place; and there being scarce anything to demonstrate this in scripture; therefore we ought not to contend strenuously about such a question.

My friend Richard, I HAVE that book in my possession, AND HAVE READ IT, cover to cover...

And I stand by my previous points.

In that case please demonstrate your case. Please show how Hoeksema worked within the framework of Witsius, et al. He emphatically rejected their view and so is in no way standing on their shoulders.

Hoeksema's theology of the covenant is a fundamental break with classic and traditional Covenant/Reformed theology and his view is untenable IMO.

Well, my friend Richard, as I am currently up to my eyebrows in tax returns, I do not have the time to show you.

Also, I am still waiting for an answer to my question in post 6 above:

(Richard, why do you think his covenant view is problematic though?)

Furthermore, I still have not seen anyone present Biblical proof of the Covenant of Works idea where man could 'earn or merit' anything (if we do perfect works, we only do what is our duty to do), let alone, earn eternal life in Heavenly Paradise. Thus man would have been able to attain to what Christ could only attain for us by his death on the cross. This, in a certain sense, would make man mighty as God.

I am realizing we are here embarking, to a certain extent, on the old supra-infra controversy...

So, what I would ask you, Richard, is to not only answer my previous question, but also, to support your assertion why Hoeksema's covenant view cannot be a further development from Brakel and Witsius (who, I agree, both held to a Covenant of Works)

And why you see it as a fundamental break with classic and traditional covenant theology, realizing that continental European covenant theology did not include a 'covenant of works'. In any case, it is absent in the 3 forms of unity...

Correct me if I am wrong, but believe only the Westminster standards make the 'covenant of works' a confessional issue?

I answered this earlier when I said:

Hoeksema's denial of the covenant of works is very problematic on a number of grounds. Most importantly it ignores the law element of the covenant made with Adam, the law which Christ kept for us and so merited us eternal life.

Also, it was wrong to say that the traditional view ignores the place of the Holy Ghost in the pactum salutis and to say that when Jesus addressed his Father he is speaking to the Triune God as opposed to his Father the first person of the Godhead does not do full justice to the NT texts.

I think that Witsius, a Brakel and Bavinck have all done so in their work.

Not really as I am supra.

It can't be a development because he states (in effect) "This is what they believed...I disagree, this is my position..." That is hardly developing their work but rather the very opposite. He in effect throws their work in to the trash and starts again, hardly a development.

May I point you to The Covenant of Works in Dutch Reformed Orthodoxy by Shane Lems;

Despite recent criticism of the covenant of works within Dutch churches, it is very clear that the covenant of works is both a Presbyterian and Reformed--indeed Dutch Reformed--doctrine. The main point of this essay is simple: the Dutch Reformed church has taught the covenant of works since the Reformation. While we may owe much to our Presbyterian brothers and sisters, we did not adopt the covenant of works from the Westminster Standards. Rather, the English and Dutch Reformed theologians were influenced by each other, and stood side by side on the covenant of works.

These influential Dutch Reformed theologians [Caspar Olevian, Zacharias Ursinus, Herman Witsius, Wilhelmus a' Brakel, Herman Bavinck, and Louis Berkhof] spanning nearly 400 years vigorously upheld the doctrine of the covenant of works. The covenant of works is not simply a Presbyterian doctrine. No one can call the covenant of works a "new thing" in Dutch Reformed theology, nor can they accuse any who hold to the covenant of works of being out of line with mainstream Reformed orthodoxy. Actually, one might make a solid argument that a denial of the covenant of works is the new and minority position in our tradition.

Disagree strongly with Shane Lems.

1. Caspar Olevianus and Zacharius Ursinus were German, not Dutch, authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, in which they do not make the Covenant of Works a confessional issue, does not even mention it.
2. All the other Dutch theologians are later than the Westminster Standards.

So the only early ones did not include the Covenant of Works in their catechism, which, if they had considered it important, they certainly would have. The later ones, in my opinion (without researching this), would have likely been influenced by Westminster.

In both Witsius and Brakel (have not read Bavinck or Berkhoff) there are many pointers to later covenant vision by Hoeksema. Such as Brakel's statements of the covenant of grace as a bond of friendship...

And my friend, you have made certain assertions to my first question, but you have not answered it. As also, that Hoeksema does specifically not ignore the legal element... It is our confession, as PR, that we stand guilty in Adam, as our federal and organic head, unless redeemed by Christ.

I have not seen any BIBLICAL proof of a Covenant of Works in any theological work.