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Reformed Classicalist

Turretin's God and Gospel: Part 3

RTS Papers / Turretin's Institutes / Spring 2018


***Citations are by volume and then page number of the P&R edition.


COVENANT


Adam was the representative head of the first covenant acting on behalf of all those who would be born to his race. Turretin preferred to call this the “covenant of nature.” There is a twofold foundation to the representative union between Adam and his seed: one was natural and the other forensic [I.577]. This is where Turretin locates the difference between natural versus positive law: the former was inscribed on the heart and the latter was restricted to the occasion by the words of God. In the Garden, prohibiting Adam from the fruit is an example of the latter.


Here again the thinking of Turretin will seem odd to the Van Tillian strand of the present Reformed landscape, who have been taught to think of natural law in the same way as natural theology — “autonomous” and “neutral” and so forth. Turretin defines natural law as “the practical rule of moral duties to which men are bound by nature” [II.2] and he makes it clear that he had Romans 2:14-15 in mind.


When more recent Reformed critics have conceived of natural law, they have understood it either descriptively (law of natural tendency), as in what sinners do in society; or even normatively, but still subjectively (law conceived by natural minds), as in what man thinks about right and wrong [cf. Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology, 76, 78]. This distortion of what natural law means comes down to us as much from Barth as from Van Til [cf. Grabill, 265]. However these subjectivities may have bled into the conception of natural law within modern thought, this is certainly not what natural law meant in the Middle Ages and among the Protestant Scholastics.

From a classical Christian perspective, natural law means what God has said about right conduct in the things that have been made. Granted that human nature is its focal point. Nevertheless its proper subject matter is divine speech, not human opinion, much less human behavior. That the conscience is the medium of this moral knowledge does not mean that human reason is the author or arbiter of its content.

A further distinction was made among the Schoolmen in which natural law encompassed the way all things in nature are. In this sense the gravity that draws objects down and the resources that draw men to war both belong to the same “laws of nature.” Turretin acknowledges this but says it should not be called “natural law” in the same way, since this is better categorized under providence [II.2]. Here we are speaking of a law of right and wrong behavior; and this pertains to the rational creature. So he says, “But it must be drawn from the right of nature itself, founded both on the nature of God, the Creator … and on the condition of rational creatures themselves” [II.3].


Right and wrong are what they are, with respect to human relations, because of various attributes of God. The ultimate “nature” in natural law is the nature of God himself; yet Paul implies a secondary nature (equally objective): namely, “what the law requires” (Rom. 2:14), and that inscribed on the heart of man. The Apostle’s parallel here between the natural law and the law of Moses explains why so many in the classical mold held to some common field between extra-biblical natural law and the moral law in the Bible, in spite of the fact that they are not the exact same thing.


This has direct implications for our thesis. Consider the distinction between moral and ceremonial law. On what basis is this distinction made? We can appeal to certain texts and work out a context from there. Turretin instead appeals to immutability. He sets up three opinions about the commands — (1) all dispensable; (2) all indispensable; (3) partly dispensable, partly indispensable — and then he shows how only the third view makes sense [II.9-10].


The key will be to remember a prior distinction made between the first order of natural right (based on the nature of God himself) and the second order of natural right (rooted in the nature of man as the image of God) [II.8-9]. This set up two senses of immutability: one absolute and the other consequential, and therefore relative. Those commands which directly reflect the nature of God are absolutely indispensable; and those which are not are only consequently indispensable. Even in the law of Moses, murder is outlawed to Israelites as image bearers per se; bleeding in the camp is outlawed to Israelites as a royal priesthood.


Man cannot set aside any command. To man, all divine commands (both of natural and positive law) are absolutely indispensable; to God the natural is indispensable but the positive are dispensable. That is why the priesthood becomes abrogated (Heb. 7:12), but the image does not (Col. 3:10, Jam. 3:9). Turretin makes this case rest in immutability: absolute and consequent.


Another implication of the eternal and immutable God can be seen in the nature of God’s relationship to his own promise. Consider the “binding” of God as a party: “with respect to God, it was gratuitous, as depending upon a pact or gratuitous promise (by which God was bound not to man, but to himself and to his own goodness, fidelity, and truth” [I.578]. To be sure, other attributes of God would increase our clarity here: e. g. aseity, sovereignty, etc. But this has immediate implications for the notion of merit. Even if we choose to see the idea of merit in the first covenant, we must not conceive of Adam’s reward as one to which God would have been indebted.

When we turn to the covenant of grace we see all three attributes of God reflected. This covenant is simple (one), eternal, and immutable. Note that these attributes are used only relatively about things outside of God, but they nevertheless reflect the absolute form of these attributes in God.

It is as if Turretin sees the New Covenant as the “covenant renewal” not only of the Abrahamic covenant but even of the covenant of redemption in eternity, of which the whole covenant of grace is the earthly manifestation. He sees in the LORD’s recalling the promise in Exodus 2 and 6 One “who, with eternity and immutability of essence, would maintain constancy and fidelity in carrying out his promise” [II.225].


While covenant theology is a hybrid of biblical and systematic theology, the features of the covenant of grace are naturally associated with the doctrine of salvation. Both are made to follow from the doctrine of God in Turretin’s thought. For instance, that all the promises are summarized in “I will be your God” follows from the simplicity of God, because there is one substance of the promise even while many blessings in God.


We see this clearly with immutability. The immutability of election unto final perseverance follows logically from the immutability of God’s nature and therefore of his decrees. If all divine decrees are immutable, and election is a divine decree, then it follows that election is immutable. And the Scriptures speak about it in this way: Romans 9:11 and 11:29, 2 Timothy 2:19, and Hebrews 6:17-18. In that last passage, the Scripture appeals to immutability when giving covenant assurance:

So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

The nature of covenant and salvation follows the nature of God.


Turretin gives a seven-point biblical argument for the oneness of the covenant between Old and New: First, “the Scriptures teach that the covenant of grace … is the same with the covenant previously made with Abraham” [II.194] (Lk. 1:68, 70, 72, 73, Acts 3:25, Rom. 4:3, Gal. 3:8, 17); Second, from the central promise that God will be our God and we his people — this unites the various administrations — to Abraham (Gen. 17:7), Moses (Ex. 3:15), Israel in captivity (Ezk. 36:28), and in the new covenant (Mat. 22:32, 2 Cor. 6:16, Rev. 21:3); Third, the better Mediator is the same for both, in promise for those beforehand (Gen. 3:15, Is. 42:6, 49:8, Mal. 3:1), in fulfillment for those after (1 Tim. 2:5, Heb. 8:6, 9:15), but always the same Christ for his people (Heb. 13:8); Fourth, the same condition, or “duty” — “‘Believe and thou shalt be saved’; the other is commanded by the evangelical law — ‘Walk before me, and be thou perfect’ (Gen. 17:1) [II.184]”; Fifth, the same spiritual promises made to both (Acts 13:32, Gal. 3:14, Ezk. 36:26-27) — the former simply under the veil of types and shadows (1 Cor. 10:1-4); Sixth, the sacraments were the same, as to substance, in both testaments (Rom. 4:11, 1 Cor. 5:7); Seventh, “the very law of Moses … instructed them concerning the covenant of grace and prepared and stimulated them to embrace it” [II.200] (Rom. 10:4, Gal. 3:24).


There remains a controversy even among those who hold to a unified covenant of grace from Old to New. This has to do with whether the legal arrangement between God and Israel at Sinai was a republication of the covenant of works. The way Turretin frames the question is whether there is a third covenant. Advocates of republication today could get around this way of putting the question. For example, when Turretin argues that “Scripture tells us of only two covenants, nowhere however of three” or else, “There can be so many and no more covenants as there are ways and modes of obtaining happiness and communion with God” [II.264].


Michael Horton, for example, would be able to agree with this, while categorizing the Mosaic Covenant in the same conditional relationship with the Adamic [cf. Horton. God of Promise. 35, 38, 43]. Both say “Do this and live.” Even if Turretin’s formulation does not anticipate the contemporary debate with specificity, there is a value to his comparison between the Adamic, the Abrahamic, and the Mosaic.


There is a lost art here in our theology. As Turretin sets forth how the Sinaitic arrangement agrees and differs with the arrangement in Eden, and then how it agrees and differs with the one made with Abraham, what criterion can discern between the two lists? He clearly wants his reader to see that the similarities of legal works between Adam and Moses are more circumstantial in comparison to the more essential similarities of promise and provided mediation between Abraham and Moses [II.262-63]. There it is again: simplicity in the covenant of grace. The difference between the simplicity of the covenant and the simplicity of its God is that, unlike God, the covenant is one in essence and yet diverse in accidens, whereas there is nothing accidental in God.


If there is overlap between covenant and the work of Christ, it is because of this concept of federal representation. We will see a necessity in the humanity of the Son by virtue of this representation. Turretin argues that, “if Christ was not made like us in all things as to identity of nature, he could not truly redeem us, since sin must be expiated in the same nature in which it was committed” [II.309]. Drawing a necessary link between God becoming man and the debt that man owed is not unique to Turretin, or even Reformed thought. Anselm had most famously argued the same. What was becoming more articulate in the seventeenth century was the notion that this link was covenantal, and that it connected the Mediator to both covenants: works and grace. Indeed Christ’s representation of us in grace was only possible if he first fulfilled for us the demands of the first covenant.


ATONEMENT


This necessity begins with the nature of the Incarnation. The assumption of flesh had to be in a certain way given the oneness of the divine essence and trinity of the persons. For example, Turretin argues, the Father could not assume flesh. Why not? It is because, “as he was first in order he could not be sent by anyone or act as mediator to the Son and the Holy Spirit” [II.304]. Moreover, in disputing with the Lutherans over Christ’s ubiquity, he contends that “either all of the properties of the divine nature were communicated [to the human] or none because they are inseparable and really one” [II.324]. So one reason we must reject the Lutheran view of the Lord’s Supper is that Christ’s human nature cannot have communicated to it any divine attribute. Since God is simple, it follows that any divine attribute communicated would imply that all such attributes were. The divine essence cannot be divided.


More specifically to the atonement itself, it is asked whether Christ suffered in the body only or in the soul also; and if in the soul, in the lower part only or also in the rational faculty. The orthodox see Christ’s suffering in the whole for the reason already introduced: man sinned in the whole. And while the bodily torment was quite real, “the sensible and external part exposed to the eyes” is not the “most heavy and most dreadful weight of divine wrath and the curse” [II.353].

The unity of the soul seems to be a premise flowing through how Turretin views Christ’s sacrifice. This unity is a classical doctrine, and yet here we see it protecting the integrity of the heart of the gospel.

Socinians in his day denied the necessity of satisfaction for sin. Among the orthodox, two views existed. Some, including Augustine [II.418], held to satisfaction on the ground that God had decreed it. In other words, it was a consequential (or hypothetical) necessity. Others, like Turretin, held that satisfaction was necessary given God’s justice. Two qualifications should be made. First, he was not saying that the former position held satisfaction to be wholly capricious, having no other reason than that God willed to do so. Those of this view spoke of a “fitting” nature of this decree so that God’s justice would be vindicated. Second, Turretin’s own view did not deny that satisfaction was a contingent truth of sorts. After all, he had already said that God did not need to redeem a people at all. The absolute necessity of satisfaction for sin takes into account the freedom of the initial decree.


What the orthodox view insists, however, is that while some of the “manner of circumstances of the punishment” may belong to “positive and free right,” yet the necessity of the punishment itself belongs to the indispensable right of divine justice. In other words, God the Just may either redeem or else not; but if he redeems sinners then he must do so in a way that makes things truly right. That is the very meaning of atonement.


In arguing that vindictive justice belongs to the essence of God, Turretin makes the strongest possible case for the necessity of penal substitution against those who supposed that God can forgive apart from retribution:

“For if it was free and indifferent to God to punish or not to punish sin without compromising his justice so that no reason besides the mere will impelled God to send his Son into the world to die for us, what lawful reason can be devised to account for God’s willing to subject his most beloved and holy Son to an accursed and most cruel death?” [I.239]

Now this takes care of the essence of the demand for justice, but what of its accomplishment?


This brings us to the very nature and extent of the atonement. Drawing from his theological method of matching the sense of words to the reality of their referents, he exposes that the Socinians’ use of “satisfaction” regards only the positive fulfillment of God’s will in Jesus’ life, and that primarily as moral teacher and example. The orthodox mean more than this by the word. It must encompass the “proper satisfaction made by the payment of a full price and which meritoriously obtains the liberation of the guilty on the ground of justice” [II.426]. All of the main texts on the redemption and ransom price show this, for him, since a “price indicates a relation … to distributive justice” [II.427].


He offers six lines of argument for the orthodox view of satisfaction, but these six categories of texts are really more like six elements comprising the nature: 1. redemption at a price; 2. substitution; 3. sin-bearing; 4. Godward sacrifice; 5. reconciliation procured by it; and 6. the nature of the death itself. Now there is a seventh line of reasoning, and this brings us back to our thesis: how the attributes of God ground this gospel.


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