Does the Covenant of Works/Covenant of Grace Schema Confuse the Law/Gospel Distinction?

Yes. This Reformed formulation minimizes the radical contrast between God's right and left hands.

The concept of the covenant obviously has historical origins that pertain to establishing an orderly and amicable existence in a wide range of human affairs. But theologically, the idea of covenant provides a helpful description of God's people as well to describe their response to his initiative. Biblical scholars in the twentieth century highlighted the importance of covenant as one of the dominant leitmotivs throughout the Scriptures. It has even been identified as "the major metaphor used to describe the relation between God and Israel (the people of God)." (1) Given its prominent place within the Scriptures, it is not surprising that both biblical and systematic theologians have also made use of the covenant theme in their particular disciplines. But biblical and systematic theologians often interpret "covenant" within different contexts and for different purposes.

Biblical theologians highlight the uniqueness of covenant in the biblical revelation for embracing the divine as well as the human role in the drama of salvation. (2) Thus, the language of covenant "depicts God in action to redeem lost sinners; they, enabled by faith, react to this undeserved gift, as they accept it and resolve to conform their lives to the will of their Creator." (3) No other Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek word embraces both roles at the same time. Covenant provides a one-word epitome of humankind's reunion with its creator, and serves to highlight both the continuity and the discontinuity of God's work before Christ and after Christ. Accordingly, biblical theologians will track the similarities and differences of the various covenants established by God from Noah (Gen. 6ff.), through Abraham (Gen. 12, 15, 17), Moses (Ex. 19 through the end of Deut.), Phinehas (Num. 25:10-31), David (2 Sam. 7), as well the establishment of the new covenant spoken by Jeremiah (Jer. 31), Jesus (Last Supper), Paul (Gal. 3-4), and the author to the Hebrews (Heb. 9:16-17).

Systematic theologians, building on the work of the biblical theologian, pick up the importance of the covenant theme but tend to interpret it within the analogy of faith in addition to the original historical setting. Thus, they put it to a broader use and for other purposes depending upon the pastoral needs and polemical exigencies of their time. For example, they will often expand it and test its usefulness as a comprehensive and coherent way of speaking about all of God's relationships. In a similar way, Lutheran theology uses the word "justification" dogmatically not only as referring to the dikaiosune word group in the New Testament, but as synecdoche for speaking about the many and various expressions of the Gospel. As a part (dikaiosune) for the whole (Gospel), justification can be used to encompass many other biblical ways of talking about the Gospel such as ransom, reconciliation, propitiation, victory, new creation, and so on.

Covenant as a Category in Lutheran and Reformed Theology

Of the two major Reformation traditions to emerge from the sixteenth century, the Lutheran and Reformed, the latter has certainly given greater prominence to-and made greater use of-the biblical language of covenant than the former. The Westminster Confession, for example, devotes an entire locus to the subject. (4) Other Reformed theologians have followed suit and often have given it a prominent place within their dogmatics. Thus, in his Systematic Theology, (5) Louis Berkhof devotes nearly forty pages to the subject, "Man in the Covenant of Grace." Like the Westminster Confession, Berkhof situates the locus on covenant between the loci of sin and Christology. In each of these cases, the concept of covenant is expanded beyond its biblical usage and is used to embrace the comprehensive coherence of God's dealings with human beings. For this reason, the Westminster Confession can speak of "a covenant of works" with reference to Adam and Eve even though the Bible itself does not use the language of berith or diatheke to speak of this relationship.

The Augsburg Confession, by contrast, contains no similar locus devoted to covenant as a topic. Indeed, in the entire Lutheran Confessional corpus, very little explicit discussion of the theme takes place. This is perhaps because covenant was a favored expression of certain late medieval theologians: these "nominalists" argued that God made a pact that if people do what they are capable of doing, he would provide the grace to help them. Other Lutheran theologians in the sixteenth century such as Philip Melanchthon and Martin Chemnitz do include a locus on covenant in their dogmatics but do so for a different purpose than the use to which it is put in the Westminster Confession. Rather than discussing covenant as an overarching framework for addressing the unity of God's dealings with human beings, they utilize the covenantal (especially the old and new covenant) language in order to maintain a radical difference between the two ways in which God carries out his work among his human creatures.

The different uses of covenant in the two traditions thus go beyond the mere mention or location of covenant within their respective theological systems and often go to the heart of the contrast between their respective theological worlds. Does covenant provide the primary framework for considering the coherence of God's work or does the distinction between law and Gospel provide the conceptual framework for finding the coherence of his work?

From a Lutheran perspective, the touchstone for understanding the two approaches for an understanding of covenant lies in the role that the law has to play in relation to the Gospel and, hence, the contribution that the law makes in establishing a person's righteousness. The Lutheran critique generally sees the Reformed use of the covenant concept as a way of bridging and harmonizing the distinction between law and Gospel so that the radical contrast between God's two works are minimized. The traditional Lutheran treatment of the covenant, by comparison, focuses on maintaining the stark contrast between the law and the Gospel as God's two ways of dealing with his human creatures.

The Lutheran Treatment of the Old and New Covenants

A brief perusal of Chemnitz's Loci Theologici quickly shows that he is thoroughly familiar with the covenant language of the Bible. (6) For him (and Melanchthon upon whose Loci Communes he builds), however, the key to understanding the covenant lies not in its continuity throughout the Bible, but in the difference between the Old and New Covenants. The emphasis on the difference between the Old and New Covenants grows out of the Lutheran view of the Gospel as victory over the law and hence the Lutheran distinction between law and Gospel. Indeed, Melanchthon and Chemnitz use the terms as metonymies for law and Gospel. This is in no way a simplistic distinction between the Old and New Testaments that renders the Old Testament as law and the New Testament as Gospel. Instead, they affirm that the old and new covenants exist side by side throughout both parts of the Bible. With this distinction between law and Gospel and its corollaries of the distinction between the two kingdoms and two kinds of righteousness, the law is fitted into a comprehensive Christocentric view of Scripture in which the twofold event of Christ's death and resurrection stands at the center. For Lutherans, the Gospel rests entirely upon maintaining such a distinction.

The distinction between law and Gospel leads Lutherans to distinguish between two arenas of God's work-the horizontal and vertical realms-that he has established for his creative and redemptive purposes respectively. In the horizontal realm, or earthly kingdom, the law rules so that works are performed for the sake of one's neighbor. In the vertical realm, or heavenly kingdom, the Gospel rules so that a person becomes righteous coram Deo by faith apart from works. The law plays a different function in each of these realms. In the horizontal realm, the law finds its original use, its "civil" or "political" use, in which the claims of the law rule over our lives on earth and promote works which are good for our neighbors (coram hominubus). These claims do not make us righteous "in heaven" (coram Deo). (7) When people use the law and its works as the foundation of their righteousness before God (thereby confusing the horizontal and vertical realms), they find that the law forces "its way accusingly into our consciences, where it condemns us as sinners and kills our self-righteousness." Thus the law acquires a "theological" or "spiritual" function that now becomes the law's most important function. In this vertical realm, the law conflicts with the Gospel: The law kills; the Gospel makes alive. It participates in our salvation only by preparing the way for the Gospel.

The Lutheran Critique of Covenant Continuity

Lutherans jealously guard this fundamental distinction between the works of God's left hand (law) and right hand (Gospel) in the matter of righteousness before God in order that the Gospel may always remain the radical word of good news that it is. Yet it is precisely this concern that has prompted Lutheran theologians to criticize the use of covenant language in Reformed thought. They see in its use a concept that brings the law and the Gospel into a peaceful harmony, and when that happens, the law stands in a position once again to become the foundation upon which people seek to deal with God rather than the Gospel. These concerns by Lutherans appear justified by the exposition of covenant in the Westminster Confession.

The Westminster Confession identifies several types of covenants. The first was a covenant of works made with Adam and Eve prior to the fall. Life was promised to Adam and his posterity "upon condition of perfect and personal obedience." (8) After the fall, God made a second covenant, this time a covenant of grace. In it he offered sinners life and salvation in Christ, requiring of them faith in him, and "promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe." The Confession then notes that the covenant of grace was administered differently in the time of the law and the time of the Gospel. Under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other ordinances. These all prefigured Christ, but "which were for that time sufficient and efficacious." (9) Under the Gospel, "when Christ the substance was exhibited," the covenant came to be dispensed through the preaching of the word, the administration of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Though possessing less outward glory than the Old Testament ordinances, they contained more fullness, evidence, and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jewish and Gentile. The Westminster Confession concludes that there are not "two covenants of grace differing in substance, but one and the same under various dispensations."

At first glance, the distinction between a covenant of works and a covenant of grace as outlined in the Westminster Confession evokes images of the Lutheran distinction between law and Gospel. But upon closer inspection, as Gustaf Wingren, a contemporary New Testament theologian, points out, the covenant of works is limited to the period of time before man's fall into sin. When man failed to keep that covenant, God made a new covenant of grace, a covenant that embraces both God's giving of grace and his subsequent imposing of obligations upon his covenant people. For Lutherans, this move appears to remove the law from God's realm of creation, the horizontal realm in which God's demands apply to all people for the sake of neighbor (as well as the Ten Commandments), and make them a distinctively (if not exclusively) Christian concern (hence an emphasis on the literal Sabbath, graven images, etc.). As part of the covenant of grace, Gospel and law both become God's means for bestowing new life.

Lutherans, thus, see this use of covenant as an overarching framework within which law and Gospel are brought into harmony by modifying the conflict between them. Law and Gospel are fitted into a superior, wider concept, the "covenant," which includes partly election ("those that are ordained") and grace ("salvation in Christ"), and partly the demands arising from election (law)." (10) Lutherans would not deny the unity of God's gracious work through the entire Bible, but they do oppose using the covenant when it is used to unite the two works of God, law and Gospel, into one single work. From this perspective, the Westminster Confession limits the distinction between law and Gospel covenants to one of differing dispensations rather than one of substance. God gave it one way under the law and another way under the Gospel. In this context, the mortifying function is no longer the proper office and work of the law. Instead, by being included in the superior "covenant," the law's proper office becomes a vivifying function, which is carried out by law and Gospel together. In the process, the centrality of Christ is potentially lost.

The Concept of Covenant

The strength of the Reformed approach to covenant lies in observing that it corresponds better with the various biblical covenant accounts (especially those that highlight both God's grace and his subsequent expectations). This strength highlights the potential weakness of the Lutheran view, namely, that it appears to split up what is an organic whole in the texts. In other words, the biblical text speaks of a whole, namely, an election and a deliverance in the Old Testament that often passes over immediately into a demand or direct law-giving (the flood, Abraham, the Red Sea). (11) Conversely, the Lutheran approach provides a salutary warning against using the term "covenant" in order to remove the radical distinction between the law and the Gospel that finds its crux in the work of Christ. Lutherans locate the unity of law and Gospel not in some overarching concept of covenant, but in God, who acts "with his left hand" (law, anger, judgment) and "with his right hand" (forgiveness, Gospel) for the sake bringing people to faith in Christ. (12)