A. When God had created man, he entered into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of perfect obedience; forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon the pain of death.

A covenant is an agreement between two or more persons. When it comes to the biblical covenants, O. Palmer Robertson has said that a covenant it is “a bond in blood sovereignly administered”1 by God. All of created reality is covenantal. If anyone should ask “Why?” about the focus of theologians on this theme of covenant, it is simply that God made covenants for his glory, through a singular salvation in which he keeps all of his promises in Christ. Covenants show a unity of purpose and history of faithfulness, and only God (and Christ, in his human nature) proves ultimately faithful in these arrangements. 

Covenant theology sees the whole Bible as a unity. There are two main covenants in the Bible (works and grace) and several “administrations” of that covenant of grace, which can introduce complexity. However this outlook sees one ultimate program of God and one substance of salvation in Christ. Contrary to what is taught by Dispensationalism, historic Covenant theology does not deny the promises to Abraham, but sees the substance of them fulfilled in Christ and for the whole church: believing Jews and Gentiles. 

Now a word about bringing biblical theology and systematic theology together to arrive at this “finished product” that we are calling “Covenant Theology.” Just as theology as a whole is done at the concept level, not the mere word level, so it is with identifying biblical covenants. What matters is not the exact words that are used in the text of Scripture, but whether the essential elements of a covenant are present in that text. Five such elements are undisputed.

In a covenant there must be: 1. two or more parties, 2. conditions or obligations, 3. blessings and curses, 4. a representation principle, 5. signs that point to those blessings.

One prominent Reformed theologian of the last century, John Murray, took issue with the label “covenant of works,” and there was the additional matter of the concept behind “works,” since biblical covenants always contain a gracious element. But often the main point on the surface is that the word “covenant” is not being used. Most covenant theologians will point to Hosea 6:7 as a kind of counterexample. There it says, “But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.” The immediate reference in this text is Israel in the wilderness; but the comparison is to Adam in Eden. And that analogous relationship is called a “covenant.”

The Name of the Original Covenant

There are actually six names in all that have been given to this first covenant: 1. works, 2. life, 3. nature, 4. creation, 5. Adamic, 6. Edenic. They each capture one aspect of the whole picture. So rather than throw any of them away, it is best to view each as a window in to God’s arrangement with man, through that first man, Adam. If what matters is that the substance of the covenant is understood—its essential elements—then it is best to embrace all of the legitimate names to some degree. For instance, Robertson calls this original covenant a “covenant of creation” and other older thinkers called it a “covenant of life,” (as evidenced by the answer to Question 12 here), and “covenant of nature” and “Adamic covenant.” I cannot emphasize enough that what matters is the substance behind the terminology. 

Let’s look at the language used in the Confession itself, in VII.2, Of God’s Covenant With Man:

The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.

Here the term COVENANT OF WORKS is used and then immediately it fixes upon LIFE as its promise. This is the place to begin in the biblical text because the positives of life come first,

“And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so” (Gen. 1:28-30).

Turretin called it the covenant of nature “not from natural obligation (which God does not have towards man), but because it is founded on the nature of man (as it was at first created by God) and on his integrity and powers.” But he also acknowledges the phrase “of ‘works’ because it depended upon works or his proper obedience.”2 Vos makes this same distinction.3 That brings in the central verse from the next chapter:

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’” (Gen. 2:16-17).

The Hebrew construction here in the last words, מֹ֥ות תָּמֽוּת, are a double use of the word for “die” (מוּת). The first is the infinitive absolute and the latter the imperfect. Some commentators suggest something like “dying, you will die,” though it is at least a simpler emphatic such as we see in the ESV’s “you will surely die.” 

The Condition of the Original Covenant

The conditions take up the majority of this answer. First, there is the positive side of the condition: UPON THE CONDITION OF PERFECT OBEDIENCE. This really gets to reason for the name “covenant of life.” If Adam would have obeyed, he would have LIFE. How much life? How long would he have lived it? Would he have achieved that greater life for his posterity? After all he represented them in death. Why would he not also in life? 

While these are all interesting questions, it is easy to skip over the natural relationship between obedience and life. When sinners think of obedience, they think of a restriction. But the prohibition is the restriction. The command itself is positive. While Genesis 2:16-17 gives the prohibition, that is only the downside to obedience. Genesis 1:26-28 and 2:15-25 gave the life of obedience. God made a creature that didn’t exist before and a whole world to explore and build. So he went from absolute nothing to the highest of dignities for a creature. So there is a sense in which grace is the wider circle around law. As Turretin said, “By his own right, God could have prescribed obedience to man (created by him) without any promise of reward).”4

Then there is the negative side: FORBIDDING HIM TO EAT OF THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. The words “good and evil” (Gen. 2:9) here function as a figure. Some take this to be “a figure for exercising moral judgment.”5 Right moral judgment is good. Why then is that forbidden? Likely the best clue comes from deconstructing the serpent’s lie which entices toward its fruit. The fruit was merely the type for which the capacity to judge was the essence. It was in this sense that they would supposedly “be like God, knowing good and evil” (3:5).

What Reformed theologians have been agreed on saying about this relationship was that it was marked by a period where Adam was under probation. In general we define probation as the process or period of testing or observing the character or abilities of a person in a certain role. In other words, in both the positive obedience unto life and the negative threat of death, Adam would be in this original blessed state only on the condition. Now let’s observe an important distinction—probation is not obligation. They are related, but they are distinct.

The moment Adam broke the covenant, the probation ended. The test terminated. Adam failed. However, the obligation remained. That is because the essence of the obligation was not bound to the fruit or even the ground of the garden, but to that form of image-bearing for which these were copies of the heavenly things.6

Note also a crucial difference between the covenants of works and grace. In the covenant of works, one could speak of God’s grace preceding Adam’s obedience unto life—as Murray stressed that Adam did not “deserve” even this arrangement. He thus objected to the use of the word “merit” here, even while not going as far as some Federal Vision advocates later would, in stripping the merit concept from the whole analogy between Adam and Christ.7 Nevertheless, this arrangement implied a “perpetual obligation of obedience,”8 and thus it is not clear anywhere in the texts that there will be a gracious guarantee of eternal life. There is in the covenant of grace. So there is special grace that comes in after the fall and does not belong to the original relationship between God and man.

But just notice the function that grace has even in the original relationship. It is not redeeming grace. It makes no plain promises to all of Adam’s posterity of eternal life. On the other hand, it is called a SPECIAL ACT OF PROVIDENCE in this Question 12 and even a CONDESCENSION in WSC VII.1. Putting this all together explains how one can use the language of “merit” without implying that God would thereby “owe” Adam because of some intrinsic worth of Adam’s performance. Venema resolves this by using the expression “undeserved favor” of the prefall relationship and “redeeming grace” of the post-fall condescension.9

The Consequences of the Original Covenant

What we have seen is that in a covenant of works, the basic principle of the relationship is conditional. That is not to say that there are no conditions to speak of in the covenant of grace. Rather, the conditions are not at the root and basis of the covenant of grace. The conditions there have been met by another: namely Christ. In a covenant of works, the very root and basis of the covenant is conditional so that the servant party is bound to do in order to live and threatened to die in his failure to do so. In short: Do this and live, don’t do it and die! Having already looked at the conditions themselves, let’s now examine the consequences of both sides. 

First to the LIFE that comes from obedience. Returning to one of those questions that may seem speculative at first glance, the Reformed have tended to press one of them: namely, would Adam’s estate been an increased blessedness had he fulfilled his part in the probationary period? Turretin said, 

“Although the Scripture does not make express mention of a heavenly life to be conferred on Adam, it is with sufficient clearness gathered by legitimate consequence from the opposed threatening of eternal death and from the sacramental seal of this promise by the tree of life (the signification of which was surely known to man).”10

Now, turning to the DEATH that comes from disobedience, we will have much more to say about this when we come to this next section in Questions 13-19. But I do want to say a word here about the manner of the death with respect to the phrase “in the day” (Gen. 2:17). There have been attempts to deny that Adam died spiritually this day, but that the whole of this death referred to his physical death when that occurred centuries later. 

What about the perpetuity of this covenant? Is the Bible teaching that once Christ has come, that such a covenant is done away with? Galatians 3:10-12 speaks to the continuing nature of the covenant of works. 

“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.”  Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.”

In this passage, Paul addresses a class of people who are attempting to live under the covenant of works. Three elements are present: the conditions of the original covenant (perfect obedience), its promise (life), and its threat (death). Paul’s two relevant citations are from Deuteronomy 27:26 and Leviticus 18:5. These speak to those who, lacking faith in Christ, are living as ones under the law for their own justification. So clearly the curse of that covenant still exists. But of course, the objection can be raised that those verses are pointing back to Sinai, not Eden. So this brings up the debate over whether the Mosaic covenant is really a thoroughly conditional covenant, a sort of second Adamic relationship stiched together into the fabric of Israel’s history (which is the way that Kline’s tradition and Westminster West tends to see it), or whether it is a fundamentally gracious administration of the Abrahamic (which has been the majority Reformed position). 

Leaving that debate aside, can we say that the Adamic relationship has continued for mankind in general? Yes. In the first place, all mankind was “in Adam” as a genetic principle. Paul said at Mars Hill, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). Other passages will show this when it comes to sin and the fall. So we will wait for that. But the principle of Adam as the head of the whole original human race, is what is known as the principle of federal representation. The word federal is from the Latin for “covenant” (foedus). Some theologians have used the expression that Adam was made a “public person.” Modern attempts to demote Adam as a historical person are are also direct challenges to this principle and so a straight line to undermining the gospel. Romans 5:12-21 makes the contrast between Adam and Christ as these representative heads of all who are in their respective covenants. 

Criticisms of the Original Covenant

First, the Remonstrants denied a covenant of works. 

Barth took issue with the covenant of works not only on the more superficial basis of a name, but for roughly the same reason that he took issue with natural theology. There can be no knowledge of God “back behind Christ,” and so one can not point back to a passage between judgment and a later grace. All of God’s creational purposes are linked to Christ in the covenant of grace. The idea of a covenant of works is therefore legalistic. Indeed to speak of a relationship between God and man that would have been founded in merit is an impersonal thing, that in spite of the additional phrase in the Confession that the condition is “perfect and personal obedience” (VII.2). The Barthians thought that this was not personal at all. It is more like a contract: no longer unconditional grace binding God to his people. In fact, this criticism became central to the larger Barthian thesis that later Reformed Scholasticism, including the Westminster tradition, had left the more grace-centered discoveries of Luther and Calvin behind. Cornelis Venema summarized their thesis in this way: 

“For Calvin, grace always precedes the law, even in paradise, and man’s obedience never merits God’s acceptance but only expresses man’s grateful and responsible answer to God’s gracious dealings with him. Life is always God’s gift, never the achievement of the obedient creature.”11

S. G. De Graaf and G. C. Berkouwer agreed with the Barthians that the Westminster Standards introduce legalism—they preferred the language of a covenant of “favor” or “creation”—though they sided with the Confession against the Barthians that there were fundamentally two covenants that divide the human race and therefore limit the relationship of Christ to his special people. At the end of the day there was still the charge expressed by Berkouwer “that God’s original relation to man was strictly ‘legal,’ or that the structure of that relation was determined by man’s merit.’”12

What would be so bad if we deny the covenant of works? To quote Old Testament professor Richard Belcher: “The implications of denying the covenant of works can be monumental for theology because the covenant of works lays a foundation for other key doctrines of Scripture, including the obedience of Christ, the relationship between Adam and Christ, and the concept of Christ as a mediator. These ideas are important for a correct view of justification by faith and the imputation of Adam’s sin and Christ’s righteousness.”13

____________

1. O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1980), 4.

2. Turretin, Institutes, I.8.3.5.

3. Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, II:31-36.

4. Turretin, Institutes, I.8.3.2.

5. Sproul, R. C. (Ed.). (2015). The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version (2015 Edition) (p. 15). Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust. Interestingly, the note in the original First Edition (2003) read “a figure for potentially unlimited knowledge,” which would seem more illuminating in terms of why it was sinful.

6. cf. Hebrews 8:5; 9:23.

7. cf. Guy Prentiss Waters’ assessment of Richard Lusk in The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2006), 41.

8. Cornelis P. Venema, Christ and Covenant Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2017), 19.

9. cf. Richard Belcher, “The Covenant of Works in the Old Testament,” in Waters, J. Nicholas Reid, & John Muether, ed., Covenant Thelogy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 69; footnotes 29 and 31 on current objections to the language of “merit,” the resolution of Venema, and the difference between Murray’s antipathy to the term and the more extreme revision by Lusk.

10. Turretin, Institutes, I.8.3.11.

11. Venema, Christ and Covenant Theology, 11.

12. Berkouwer quoted in Venema, Christ and Covenant Theology, 14.

13. Belcher, “The Covenant of Works in the Old Testament” in Covenant Theology, 63-64.