Kline, Moral Law, Covenant of Works, Eternal Life?????

[MW]

I probably should have worded my question differently: How did Israel end up in exile, or maybe more to the point, if not works, than on what basis did Israel receive the Covenant curses?

You have gone too far into the future from Sinai. According to Hebrews 3-4 Israel did not enter rest in the promised land to begin with. Why? Because of disobedience in the wilderness at Kadesh Barnea. Nevertheless the book of Numbers makes provisions for life in the land and Deuteronomy renews the covenant with the next generation. Moreover, whilst in the land they repeatedly suffered oppression for disobedience, and then their own kings were the means of oppressing them. Finally came the exile, but then there was a return from exile. The curses looked forward to restoration in grace. A republished covenant of works cannot deal with this element.

Concerning Galatians 3, a new covenant could not have been added to the covenant made with Abraham, for, as Hebrews 8-10 teaches, the establishing of a new covenant makes the previous covenant old. The argument that Galatians 3 is referring to the law as a covenant nullifies the apostle's argument that the covenant made with Abraham remained in force even under the law.

The apostle expressly states that the law was added to the covenant made with Abraham to bind Israel into the faith of Christ; chapter 4 elaborates that the legal administration was owing to the children being in their minority, but it emphasises the relation of Israel under the law was as children.

Galatians 4 sets up an allegory in which the law is viewed as a covenant of works, but this covenant was established by unbelieving Israel turning the law into a covenant of works. This is Jerusalem below, who is enslaved. True Israel was and always shall be under the covenant of grace of God's making. This is Jerusalem above, who is free.

 

[Peairtach]

This is a bit off topic maybe, but we're does God say that the New Covenant is unbreakable? Not sure youcan make that assumption from Jeremiah 31. Are you saying that man can't deny his birth rite and denounce Christ? There are many children that I can point to who have profaned the sign and seal and died in with their denial of Christ. I can name many adults who were baptized and renounced their baptism.

I agree, Martin. I'm saying that the New Covenant, as a whole, can't be dispensed with as the Old was. The Old Testament was provisional.

 

[timmopussycat]

Galatians 4 sets up an allegory in which the law is viewed as a covenant of works, but this covenant was established by unbelieving Israel turning the law into a covenant of works. This is Jerusalem below, who is enslaved. True Israel was and always shall be under the covenant of grace of God's making. This is Jerusalem above, who is free.

I have been trying to frame something like this paragraph for a month for other reasons. Very well put and thank you.

 

[Douglas P.]

Does the Mosaic as a separate Covenant of Works to reflect the original Covenant of Works seem plausible for you?

Regardless if I think it seems plausible or not, Paul makes it clear that it is. However, I think its very plausible and an obvious picture. God is constantly using typological imagery to "republish" themes throughout scripture. Adam is the Archetype (or prototype), Israel is the Type, and Christ is the Antitype, each of which is under a covenant which blessings can only be obtained through their own works.

Is the Mosaic Covenant different in Nature in comparison to the Abrahamic Covenant?

Without knowing how you would define Nature, I dont want to say anything that is misleading. So I'll put it this way: The Abrahamic & Mosaic covenants are separate covenants, however, as I've stated before, the Covenant at Sinai is subservient (its purpose is to be a means to the end) to the Abrahamic Covenant. The end of the Abrahmic Covenant is Christ, and (this is very important for understanding Paul, especially in Galatians) the inclusion of the Gentiles into the people of God through Christ.

This leads me to what I'm sure will be the main dividing line between us. Which is that I am unconvinced, by both historical and biblical evidence, that the judaizers were teaching a graceless works based religion. To put it another way, I do not think Paul's argument in Galatians is: Watch out for the legalists, they are teaching you that you're are saved by your meritorious works, but I Paul the Apostle am teaching you that you are saved by faith alone.

I think that Galatians reads much more naturally along these lines: "Watch out for those who are teaching you to continue to keep the Law (this is the covenant made at Sinai), the Law was a temporary covenant added for a specific redemptive historical purpose, until Christ came. Now, you who want to keep the law (Mosaic Covenant), by doing so you reject the Gospel (the coming, death, and Resurrection of Christ) because the Gospel is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. And the fulfillment of the Abrahmic Covenant means, by definition, the end of the subservient Covenant made at Sinai.

Now with this understanding, here is how I would paraphrase/understand a passage like Gal. 3:10-14

10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.”

[There is a sub-eschatological judgment based on merit/works for those who are under the law covenant. This is what is different between the Abrahamic Covenant and Mosaic Covenant. One is by works, the other by faith.]

11 Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”

[I cant overstate the importance of this verse, notice what Paul is saying, he is essentially saying, "our common ground here is that we all know that we are eschatologically justified before God, not by the covenant made at Sinai, but through faith". The implications of this are hugely important, because if you want to read Paul in the more classical anti-legalist way then this verse makes no sense whatsoever. Paul couldn't say that the one thing that is manifestly evident and certain between him and his hearers is that they agree that they are not justified before God by the Law.]

12 But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.”

[Again, just to reiterate the obvious for a third time, the covenant at Sinai is not of faith, but of works]

13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

[Conclusion, Christ redeemed the true people of God from the curse of the Law effectively ending the covenant hold that the Law had on the people. If it wasnt for the coming of Christ, the cruse of the law, and the stranglehold of the law would still be in place, and most importantly for Paul's argument, the Gentiles would not yet be part of the Covenant people of God. So when those in Galatia wanted the Gentile believers to identify as Jews through circumcision, they were effectively saying that Christ had not come yet. Why? Because the Law was a temporary subservient covenant, a means to an end, and if the end hasnt come than that means that the means (Covenant at Sinai) was still in place, and if the means was still in place then the gentiles still need to be excluded from the covenant people of God and the promise of Abraham has not been fulfilled.]

When Adam was created was he created under the Covenant of Works as a creational entity? In other words was Adam created under the condition of that Covenant?

“Man’s creation as image of God meant, as we have seen, that the creating of the world was a covenant-making process. There was no original non-covenantal order of mere nature on which the covenant was superimposed. Covenantal commitments were given by the Creator in the very act of endowing the mancreature with the mantle of the divine likeness. …The situation never existed in which man’s future was contemplated or presented in terms of a static continuation of the original state of blessedness (Kingdom Prologue [2000], p. 92).”
Do you believe Kline is correct here?

I've never really thought through the entire implications of what's being said in the quote. I do however, really like the last sentence, and will reiterate what I said earlier, that prior to the fall, Adam's relationship with God was never in any way a redemptively-gracious relationship.

 

[Douglas P.]

The problem with asserting that Galatians 3:19ff demonstrates that the law being spoken of here is a typological republication of the CoW is that Paul doesn't dispense with it in that fashion. If, as asserted, the Sinai Covenant serves as a CoW for the nation (while individuals are to understand that they are in a gracious CoG) then the "we" of the pericope doesn't fit. If the "we" being under a guardian is a typological repubilicaiton of the CoW then the nation of Israel is the "we" in the pericope. This means that the nation is the "we" that is now (typologically?) no longer under a guardian.

Rich, I'm not sure I'm following or understanding what the problem is? I think the "we" is more likely the people of God, however, even if it is just national Israel, it would still be true to say that Israel is no longer under the law. Right?

 

[Douglas P.]

You have gone too far into the future from Sinai. According to Hebrews 3-4 Israel did not enter rest in the promised land to begin with. Why? Because of disobedience in the wilderness at Kadesh Barnea. Nevertheless the book of Numbers makes provisions for life in the land and Deuteronomy renews the covenant with the next generation. Moreover, whilst in the land they repeatedly suffered oppression for disobedience, and then their own kings were the means of oppressing them. Finally came the exile, but then there was a return from exile. The curses looked forward to restoration in grace. A republished covenant of works cannot deal with this element.

My question wasnt what the curses looked forward to or if a republished covenant of works can make sense of the element. My question, which still stands, is on what basis (I say their works) was Israel judged?

 

[alexandermsmith]

Incidentally, this might not make those that hold to this view happy but I really don't see much of a methodological difference between these two statements:

1. "Hey! Look at these Hittite treaties - THAT's the way the Covenants operate. We need to re-build our understanding of the Covenants based on this discovery from the 1950's!"

and

2. "Hey! Look at this literature from 2nd Temple Judaism and the way the Jews thought that justification was covenant participation. We need to get a new perspective on Paul concerning Justification."

Excellent!

These guys are off their meds.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

The problem with asserting that Galatians 3:19ff demonstrates that the law being spoken of here is a typological republication of the CoW is that Paul doesn't dispense with it in that fashion. If, as asserted, the Sinai Covenant serves as a CoW for the nation (while individuals are to understand that they are in a gracious CoG) then the "we" of the pericope doesn't fit. If the "we" being under a guardian is a typological repubilicaiton of the CoW then the nation of Israel is the "we" in the pericope. This means that the nation is the "we" that is now (typologically?) no longer under a guardian.

Rich, I'm not sure I'm following or understanding what the problem is? I think the "we" is more likely the people of God, however, even if it is just national Israel, it would still be true to say that Israel is no longer under the law. Right?

Look at the way the pericope tracks with respect to whom the "we" is predicated:

Galatians 3:19ff (ESV)

19*Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 20*Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.
21*Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22*But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
23*Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24*So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25*But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26*for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27*For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28*There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29*And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

The "we" under a guardian follows through the passage as being those who are sons of God through faith. Consequently, if the subject of these pronouns is the Nation typologically under the CoW (which is what you say is communicated by the "...we were held captive under the law...", then it is the case that the Nation of Israel is now justified by faith and are all sons of God. It just doesn't work to insert the entire Nation under a typological CoW in this passage.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Concerning Galatians 3, a new covenant could not have been added to the covenant made with Abraham, for, as Hebrews 8-10 teaches, the establishing of a new covenant makes the previous covenant old. The argument that Galatians 3 is referring to the law as a covenant nullifies the apostle's argument that the covenant made with Abraham remained in force even under the law.

The apostle expressly states that the law was added to the covenant made with Abraham to bind Israel into the faith of Christ; chapter 4 elaborates that the legal administration was owing to the children being in their minority, but it emphasises the relation of Israel under the law was as children.

Galatians 4 sets up an allegory in which the law is viewed as a covenant of works, but this covenant was established by unbelieving Israel turning the law into a covenant of works. This is Jerusalem below, who is enslaved. True Israel was and always shall be under the covenant of grace of God's making. This is Jerusalem above, who is free.

This is extremely well put! It seems to me that the attempts to force a republication typology upon Galatians 3-4 blinds the reader from actually following Paul's point in the entire Epistle. It's a problem that many have as they fail to see that when Paul uses law and circumcision here (as elsewhere in his epistles) he'll often use them as shorthand for a defective way of understanding the economy of the Covenants or the place of the law. Paul is critical of those who fail to apprehend that all flesh in captive - it is enslaved. Isaiah even points out that the Jews have become as blind as the nations around them. Nicodemus is reproved because he doesn't understand the necessity of grace, by the Spirit, that a man might be able to see, that he might have life. Thus, the Judaizers are a form of semi-Pelagian (yes it's anachronistic) moralizers who fail to see that grace grants life and faith and all spiritual fruit. They start with the law as a moral obligation assuming that they have the capacity to obey it and achieve the righteousness demanded. They are depending upon the strength of the flesh so that every time Paul enjoins them to understand that it is faith that is the ground of righteousness the only thing they can hear is the idea that Paul is saying that we don't need to be righteous or that he is speaking against the Law. For all their desire to honor God's law (as they see it) they are not able to see Christ as the law-keeper, the true worshiper, the perfect Prophet, Priest, and King that fulfills the demands that the Law truly required. They don't understand that they only have access to the heavenly sanctuary only through the veil of Christ's flesh.

This is why Paul consistently contrasts between those who are born of flesh and those who are born of the Spirit. The whole point of bringing up Ishmael is that he was born of the flesh (natural conception) and he is a man of the flesh. He trusts in the flesh. Yet, he is a child of Abraham. He even had the sign of circumcision. He is prototypical of someone who blindly mistakes his natural relationship to the things of God and lives his life by the power of the flesh. What does trusting in the flesh produce: Galatians 5 points out that the fruits of this trust is exactly the opposite of righteousness. Even as the Pharisees claimed to be the paragons of the law, they were plotting to murder the Son of God when He stepped on their fleshly Sabbath rules. It is only when the Jews recognize that it is in Christ that they receive everything that the Old Covenant pre-figured that they will understand. They have everything in the Scriptures and in their flesh that ought to have pointed them to the necessity that faith is the hinge upon which the door of salvation opens. It is then that natural offspring might receive the seal of what was signified as the Spirit produces in them holiness as they are in Christ.

My problem with the Republication thesis is that it tends to vindicate a faulty view of the law. It is granted by its proponents that, individually, they were to trust in the Abrahamic promise and approach God only in faith. Yet, supposedly, God had superimposed what can only be described as something that would be also teaching them that, collectively, blessing was by works. Thus, God set up Israel as a parable of salvation by works (if the thesis is true) and the individual worshiper was supposed to overcome this typology and realize that he, individually, wasn't to view blessings in that fashion. As already noted by Mathis, it seems that this is based on form criticism that seeks to apply a pagan typology on the Scriptures and, since it detects this typology in the Sinaitic covenant, it is bound to treat Sinai as republication rather than an administration of the CoG.

The practical fruit of seeing the Law, then, as a type of the CoW is that it wrests it from understanding its place as a servant. Whereas understanding the slavery to freedom motif and that the Law is given to a people freed (alive) from slavery (death) to serve the living God they can only see Law in the context of slavery. If the Law is properly understood then it is first understood in the context of being heirs to the Promise and, thus, the proper understanding would be that obedience would not depend upon their (or the Nation's) perfect keeping of it for it to be fruitful. Rather, they ought to have understood the keeping of the Law as a fruit of their being "in Christ" (as much as they could have understood it). They ought to have understood that, as Abraham, they were declared righteous by their faith and not by law-keeping and so they could, in fact, trust the Lord to provide the obedience He required of them as they trusted in Him in a daily life of repentance and faith. The Republication thesis makes the striving to keep the Law as a CoW - by the flesh and not by faith because the Law has been taken away from being an administration of the CoG.

It thus has the same dangerous effect of making the believer in Christ think of the Law as inherently not "of grace". This thread was started on the idea that someone denies the whole idea of the moral law being binding upon the believer because of the dangerous conclusion that the nature of moral law is to impose a CoW. This is precisely what the Judaizers believed. The person who holds to this view is actually vindicating the Judaizing view that the Law is not of faith but of works and that the only sense in which it can be obligatory is as a CoW (which the believer is not under). It propagates the lie of those who misunderstood the Covenants in Paul's day. Its modern proponents may not be attempting to live by the Law as a CoW as the Judaizers did but they propagate the misunderstanding of the Law that the Judaizers held to. They deny that the Lord never intended for the dead to obey the Law but those alive in Christ. They propagate the lie that the Law belongs to slaves instead of seeing it as a blessing and fruit that flows out of union with Christ.

 

[MW]

My question wasnt what the curses looked forward to or if a republished covenant of works can make sense of the element. My question, which still stands, is on what basis (I say their works) was Israel judged?

Technically the covenant of works threatened death, not curse. Any "curse" on earth is a temporal delay of eternal punishment. The very fact fallen men continue to live in God's earth is owing to the gracious design of God to save His people from their sins. So the curses are in fact an element of the covenant of grace, instituted after the fall, to provide for the administration of mercy in a world under judgment. The same applies to the curses threatened on Israel. They were the means of ensuring the continued faithfulness of God to His promises whilst effectively dealing with the reality of disobedience and judgment.

 

[TheOldCourse]

My question wasnt what the curses looked forward to or if a republished covenant of works can make sense of the element. My question, which still stands, is on what basis (I say their works) was Israel judged?

Technically the covenant of works threatened death, not curse. Any "curse" on earth is a temporal delay of eternal punishment. The very fact fallen men continue to live in God's earth is owing to the gracious design of God to save His people from their sins. So the curses are in fact an element of the covenant of grace, instituted after the fall, to provide for the administration of mercy in a world under judgment. The same applies to the curses threatened on Israel. They were the means of ensuring the continued faithfulness of God to His promises whilst effectively dealing with the reality of disobedience and judgment.

How does this fit with Galatians 3? I'd understood the curse there as the curse of the covenant of works (death) which Christ underwent in our stead.

 

[MW]

How does this fit with Galatians 3? I'd understood the curse there as the curse of the covenant of works (death) which Christ underwent in our stead.

Galatians 3 draws attention to the manner of death, not death itself, and it is the vicarious nature of the curse-bearing which effects the extension of the blessing to Gentiles and the inauguration of the age of the Spirit. This can be carefully applied to fill out our understanding of the penalty of the covenant of works in the purpose of God, but to impose the covenant of works in its entirety onto the text would smother the point of the text that curse-bearing was serving the economy of salvation in God's plan for Jews and Gentiles.

 

[Andrew P.C.]

And the consequences are becoming quite apparent.

Yes, and as a result we have statements from Horton, Lee Irons, and others in support of same-sex "marriage" (whatever that means).

For clarification, Horton drew the line in saying he could not support same sex "marriage", but did say he could affirm gay domestic partnerships for the protection of legal and economic interests.

Mark, agreed on the wording. However, support for whatever reason, is support.No matter how you want to word it, it's homosexuality protected by the civil magistrate. It would be the same as saying he supports abortion for economic reasons because it's a fetus, not a baby. Homosexuality is a violation of the Law, and so is murder. This is fundamentally different then what the divines taught in the Westminster Standards, and what has been historically taught in the Church. The Klinean position is not historical but a-historical. It is the Westminster West guys who are trying to pass Klinean doctrine as something historical in the Church.

 

[MW]

On the grace displayed in the curses, consider Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology, p. 44: "Finally, we note the revelation of justice in the curses upon the woman and the man. The woman is condemned to suffer in what constitutes her nature as woman... The element of grace interwoven with this consists in the implication that, notwithstanding the penalty of death, the human race will be enabled to propagate itself... Cursed is the ground for man’s sake; it brings forth thorns and thistles; here the element of grace mingling with the curse consists in that the bread will after all be bread; it will sustain life. As the woman is enabled to bring new life into the world, so the man will be enabled to support life by his toil."