In reading Particular Baptist sources from the classical period of Particular Baptist theology, piety, and practice and from modern proponents of that tradition I have become more deeply impressed with how superficial my understanding was and how great the differences are in some important respects. Until a few years ago my impression was that the differences between us were mainly a matter of eschatology (the PBs have a more highly realized eschatology of the New Testament than we do) and ecclesiology, that the PBs consequently cannot admit infants to the external administration of the covenant of grace until they have what the administration offers. These are real differences but the differences run more deeply. This is what I was trying to explore and explain in the essay, “Engaging With 1689.”

Communication Or Communion?

In writing that series, now compiled into one piece (caveat, it is 15,000 words) I realized more clearly that for some in the PB tradition the types and shadows witness to or reveal the coming redemption, which the Old Testament believers have only proleptically, i.e., by anticipation but God the Son is not actually present. By contrast, in the Reformed view (see below) the Christ and his benefits, the substance of the covenant of grace,  are in, with, and under the types and shadows. For the PBs Christ and the covenant of grace cannot be in, with, and under the types because, a priori, that could only be true in the New Covenant. For the PBs, there is one covenant of grace with one administration: the New Covenant.

In conversations with some who are working through these issues it has also become clearer to me that the Reformed and Particular Baptists can use the same language or similar language and yet mean different things by it. This is not always clearly understood. E.g., consider Westminster Confession of Faith 8.6:

6. Although the work of redemption was not actually wrought by Christ till after his incarnation, yet the virtue, efficacy, and benefits thereof were communicated unto the elect, in all ages successively from the beginning of the world, in and by those promises, types, and sacrifices, wherein he was revealed, and signified to be the seed of the woman which should bruise the serpent’s head; and the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world; being yesterday and today the same, and forever.

Now consider the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, 8.6:

6. Although the price of redemption was not actually paid by Christ till after his incarnation, yet the virtue, efficacy, and benefit thereof were communicated to the elect in all ages, successively from the beginning of the world, in and by those promises, types, and sacrifices wherein he was revealed, and signified to be the seed which should bruise the serpent’s head; and the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, being the same yesterday, and to-day and for ever. ( 1 Corinthians 4:10; Hebrews 4:2; 1 Peter 1:10, 11; Revelation 13:8; Hebrews 13:8 )

The formal differences seem relatively minor. We say that “the work of Christ was not actually wrought till after his incarnation…” and they say, “[a]lthough the price of redemption as not actually paid by Christ till after his incarnation…”. The next clauses are virtually identical. The Baptists change “benefits” to “benefit.”

What, however, do the PBs mean by communicate as distinct from what the Reformed mean by it? The Baptist theologian Nehemiah Coxe (d. 1689) gave us an indicator when he wrote, “[t]hat notion (which is often supposed in this discourse) that the old covenant and the new differ in substance and not only in the manner of their administration, certainly requires a larger and more particular handling…”.¹ He continued by claiming that he found support in Owen’s commentary on Hebrews chapter 8 (a claim which his modern heirs continue to repeat). Contemporary Particular Baptists continue to make this claim.

Coxe’s account of the institution of the covenant of grace in Genesis 3 is telling. Reformed readers need to be alert to the fact that though there are real points of agreement between the Reformed and the Particular Baptist traditions, there are genuine, if subtle differences with real consequences. In explaining what happened in Genesis 3:15 Coxe wrote that God instituted “bloody sacrifices,” which were accepted by God when offered in faith, were for the “further instruction of man” concerning his redemption. The coats of skin were a shame to Adam and Eve were for their “instruction” concerning the “imputed righteousness in which they must stand.” Amen. He continues, however,

It must also be noted that although the covenant of grace was revealed this far to Adam, yet we see in all this there was no formal and express covenant transaction with him. Even less was the covenant of grace established with him as a public person or representative of any kind. But as he obtained interest for himself alone by his own faith in the grace of God revealed in this way, so must those of his posterity that are saved.²

Coxe agreed with the Reformed that Adam is not the head of redeemed humanity. That office is reserved for Christ (Rom 5:12–21). He also agreed with the Reformed (and the ecumenical faith) that there was an Old Testament church. E.g., “the church was never without God’s oracles.”³ He wrote of “an extraordinary dispensation of God’s providence to Enoch.”⁴ Under Noah, the gospel was preached under “types and dark shadows” so that “instruction” was “afforded them.”⁵ He described the way that Noah believed in roughly the way the Reformed do but when he described the covenant that God made with Noah, he did not characterize it as a present administration of the one covenant of grace. Rather, “the covenant of eternal salvation was implied and darkly shadowed under this covenant, even as the promise of the heavenly inheritance to believers was afterwards couched in the promise of Canaan to Abraham and his seed.”⁶ What is notable is what is not said. In Reformed theology, the covenant of grace that God made with Noah was not merely promised. It was actually present. The Noahic covenant was another administration of the one covenant of grace inaugurated, in history, in Genesis 3:15. It was not merely another witness to it but an actual administration of it.

When Coxe thought of the Abrahamic covenant, the pre-eminent administration of the covenant of grace in the Old Testament, he thought not of the progressive revelation of salvation and the serial administration of the one covenant of grace, in, with, and under types and shadows. Rather, as Abraham believed, the “grace and blessings of the new covenant were given and ensured to Abraham for himself.”⁷

The fruit of this approach appears in his rejection of the Reformed view of the external administration of the covenant of grace. Just when he had the perfect opportunity to affirm the one covenant of grace, under various typological administrations, coming to fruition in the new covenant he did not.⁸  The Abrahamic covenant cannot be an administration of the covenant of grace because the “covenant of circumcision given to the carnal seed…can no more convey spiritual and eternal blessings to them as such, than it can now enright a believer (though a child of Abraham) in their temporal and typical blessings.”⁹  He continued, “neither can I see any reason for assigning a covenant interest in all typified spiritual blessings (as well as in the temporal blessings that were the types of them) to the carnal seed, and yet not admit the same covenant to convey temporal blessings to the spiritual seed.” What does this mean? It means “the truth is, despite the relationship this covenant has to the covenant of grace, it yet remains distinct from it. It can give no more than external and typical blessings to a typical seed.”¹⁰ Ultimately, for Coxe, the Abrahamic covenant was not a covenant of grace nor an administration of the one covenant of grace. It was merely a witness to the New Covenant. It was, as he wrote, “distinct” from the covenant of grace. Sam and Micah Renihan have argued the same thing. They argue,

One of the most interesting features of this covenant was that while God promised to bring about the fulfillment of his promises irrespective of merit on Abraham’s part, he likewise required Abraham and all those under his federal headship to keep the covenant through circumcision. Those who were disloyal or disobedient would be cut off (Gen. 17:14). So, while God guaranteed that the promises would be fulfilled collectively to Abraham and his offspring, the tenure of individuals or families in those blessings depended on their faithfulness to the dictates of the covenant. Considered from this perspective, can the covenant of circumcision rightly be called an administration of the covenant of grace? If the covenant of grace is the accomplishing of the covenant of redemption in history, the retroactive application of the new covenant, then the distinction between national Israelite promises via Abraham and new creation promises via Christ should be clear. We can state confidently that although all the Abrahamic promises typologically reveal the new covenant, in their substance and essence they are distinct from it (emphasis added).¹¹

This is a deep and fundamental difference between PB and Reformed theology and thus also piety and practice. In light of this approach we can understand why Sam Renihan speaks of the Abrahamic covenant as “a covenant of works.”¹² The PBs did not and do not see the Adamic (post-fall) or the Noahic covenants as administrations of the covenant of grace but as witnesses to it, since, in the PB view, the covenant of grace is entirely future. In PB theology, the new covenant is the covenant of grace. In Reformed theology, the new covenant is the fulfillment of the types and shadows but it is not the only administration of the covenant of grace. The Adamic (post-fall), the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the Davidic were administrations of the covenant of grace.¹³

In short, when we say communication we mean “communing.” When the PBs say communication they seem to mean “the transmission of information.” As I wrote in the “Engaging” essay,

So here is a difference between the PB and the Reformed. For the PBs, the OT covenants are not the covenants of grace as much as they are witnesses to the covenant of grace. For the Reformed the OT covenants are earthly, historical, real, external, administrations of the one covenant of grace through types and shadows. Through those administrations God the Spirit gave more than “external and typical” (typological) blessings. God the Spirit was sovereignly operating within his people through the sacrifices, through the ceremonies, through the prophetic Word, to bring the elect to new life and to true faith in Jesus the Messiah. This is our understanding of Hebrews 11 when it says that Moses preferred Christ—not typical and external blessings—to the riches of Egypt (Heb 11:24–26). Abraham was looking for a city whose builder and maker is God (Heb 11:10). Had he wanted “earthly and typical” blessings, he could have had them.

For the Reformed the OT covenants were more than witnesses to and revelations of the covenant of grace, they were administrations of the substance of the covenant: “I will be a God to you and to your children,” the fulfillment of which was Christ, in whom all the promises of God are yes and amen (2 Cor 1:20).

We can see the differences between the two systems by looking at 1 Corinthians 10:1-4.

That Rock Was Christ: The Reformed Approach

the general hermeneutical approach

For the Reformed, the covenant of grace was in, with, and under the types and shadows. It was not merely a future (New Covenant) reality but it was a present reality, albeit in types and shadows. Thus, when we say “communicated” we mean rather more than the transmission of information. The virtue, benefit, and efficacy was shared to the Old Testament saints by the mysterious operation of the Holy Spirit through the divinely ordained means of grace. How do we know this? From God’s Word.

Which of the Trinitarian persons walked with Adam in the Garden, “in the Spirit of the day” (Gen 3:8)?  Who is the Logos, the Word of God and the Mediator? It is not the Father and it is not the Holy Spirit. What about the Angel of Yahweh? Who confronted Moses in the burning bush (Ex 3:14)? Who was at the top of Sinai mediating the Law of God to Moses? In the history of Reformed theology, Reformed theologians have not been shy about seeing theophanies, personal manifestations of the Triune God throughout the Old Testament. J. H. Heidegger (1633–98) argued

the Sinaitic covenant was the covenant of grace, not the covenant of works. For the parties contracting were the same in the covenant of grace: the same principal Mediator; the true Christ; the Messenger of the Covenant; the same sanction through the blood of the testament, which was a type of the blood of Christ; and the same evangelical promises. But yet the legal economy had a mixture of the covenant of grace and of derived legal servitude, and thus it differed from the promise before the law and fro the gospel after the law.¹⁴

When Heidegger wrote of the “legal economy” he was referring to the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace. He was explicit that Sinai was a covenant of grace and perhaps most important for our interests here, he has God the Son as the “principal Mediator” of the covenant of grace at Sinai.  Richard Muller observes that in the Reformed theologian Franz Burman (1628-97) we find a “discussion of the prophetic office of Christ in the Old Testament” he identified Christ as the Word incarnate which “allows Burman to point all of the verba Dei toward Christ and, moreover, to view all of the Old Testament verbi Dei as the work of the pre-incarnate Word. The Old Testament, therefore, reveals the office of Christ.”¹⁵  John Owen wrote of “all” the “personal appearances” of the pre-incarnate Son “under  the Old Testament, especially that most illustrious representation made of him unto the prophet Isaiah, chap. 6, and the glorious revelation of his name, chap. 9:6.”¹⁶

*These identifications were not arbitrary. According to Hebrews 12:1 God the Son incarnate is at the top of the mountain to which we have come. He explains more fully in vv. 22–29:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.  See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire (ESV).

We have come to God, the angels, and to Jesus the Mediator. From a redemptive-historical perspective, the contrast here is between Moses, the earthly mediator and Christ, the heavenly mediator but the contrast rests upon a comparison between Sinai and Zion. The Son did not take up his place de novo at the top of the mountain in the new covenant. He has always been the Mediator. His mediation was administered typologically through Moses but it already was. Phil Ryken explains the general pattern of the presence of the pre-incarnate Son in the types and shadows:

…this messenger was distinguished from God, yet at the same time had uniquely divine attributes. Therefore, many Christians have identified him as the second person of the Trinity, the pre-incarnate Son of God. We have encountered this phenomenon before, back at the burning bush and at the place where the water came from the rock. Long before his incarnation, long before he was born in Bethlehem, Christ was with his people on their way to salvation. Mackay concludes: “Christian interpreters have generally identified the angel mentioned here and the angel of the LORD found throughout the Pentateuch as the one phenomenon, which is a temporary pre-incarnate appearance of the second person of the Trinity to give encouragement to the people of God. He is the one who goes before his people to protect them and bring them to the place he has prepared for them.”¹⁷

We see this perhaps most clearly in Paul’s warning to the Corinthian congregation:

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:1–4).

Let us consider a few places in Reformed theology and note the differences between the way the Reformed read redemptive history and the way the PBs understand it.

calvin

How do the Reformed understand this passage? Calvin’s comments here are a good beginning. He noted at the beginning that this passage, properly understood, is a refutation of the medieval view, represented by Peter Lombard’s Sentences (3:5), which held, as Calvin accurately summarizes,

that the Sacraments of the ancient law were emblems of grace, but ours confer it. This passage is admirably suited for refuting that error, for it shows that the reality of the Sacrament was presented to the ancient people of God no less than to us.¹⁸

This is, as my friend Chris Smith noted in a seminar a few years ago, effectively the PB view of the Old Testament. The covenants and sacraments of the Old Testament are witnesses (emblems) of future, New Covenant grace, but do not actually convey it. Calvin rejected this view. For Calvin, “the reality of the Sacrament was presented” to the Old Testament church just as it is to us. The note is one of the substantial continuity of the covenant of grace. In case his view was not clear, he explained:

I grant, indeed, that the efficacy of the signs is furnished to us at once more clearly and more abundantly from the time of Christ’s manifestation in the flesh than it was possessed by the fathers. Thus there is a difference between us and them only in degree, or, (as they commonly say,) of “more and less,” for we receive more fully what they received in a smaller measure. It is not as if they had had bare emblems, while we enjoy the reality.¹⁹

According to Calvin, “the ancient people of God were honoured with the same benefits with us, and were partakers of the same sacraments…”.¹⁹ For Calvin, in Paul’s argument to the Corinthians the rock in v. 4 is a sacrament and the union between Christ and the rock is sacramental: “the reality of the things signified was exhibited in connection with the ancient sacraments. As, therefore, they were emblems of Christ, it follows, that Christ was connected with them, not locally, nor by a natural or substantial union, but sacramentally.”²¹

How then did they eat Christ, since “his flesh did not as yet exist”? For Calvin, it was not enough for the rock to be a witness to a future reality. Their salvation “required” them to “receive the flesh and blood of Christ.” They received it by “the secret work of the Holy Spirit, who wrought in them in such a manner, that Christ’s flesh, though not yet created, was made efficacious in them.” It is true that, in the progress of revelation and redemption, “Christ is now presented to us more fully” because “in the present day, the eating is substantial, which it could not have been then—that is, Christ feeds us with his flesh, which has been sacrificed for us, and appointed as our food, and from this we derive life.”²²

ursinus

Zacharias Ursinus (1534–83), who was a student of Philipp Melanchton (d. 1560) and Calvin, articulated the Reformed view concisely in his explanation of Heidelberg Catechism 66:

V. IN WHAT DO THE SACRAMENTS OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS AGREE, AND DIFFER?

They agree in having God for their author, and in the things which are signified; for the sacraments, both of the Old and New Testaments, signify, promise and offer the same blessings, viz: the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost through Christ alone, as the following passages of Scripture prove: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” “Our fathers were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud; and did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.” “In whom ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands,” by which it is declared that we receive the same blessings in baptism which the saints of old did in circumcision. “Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us.” (Heb. 13:8. 1 Cor. 10:2, 3, 4. Col. 2:11. 1 Cor. 5:7.) Augustin says, “The sacraments of the Old and New Testaments differ in their signs, but agree in the thing signified. The fathers all ate the same spiritual meat. The earthly meat, however, which they ate was different from that which we eat; they ate manna, we do not; but the spiritual meat which they did eat, is the same as that which we eat.” Without Christ, who is the thing signified in the sacraments, of both testaments, no one ever has been saved, or can be saved. It follows, therefore, that the fathers, who lived under the Old Testament, had the same communion with Christ which we also have, and that this was signified no less to them, by the word and sacraments, than it is now to us p 347 under the New Covenant.²³

What is perhaps the key sentence in this passage bears repeating and emphasis: “It follows, therefore, that the fathers, who lived under the Old Testament, had the same communion with Christ which we also have…” (emphasis added). When the Reformed say “communication” they mean communion. God the Son, in his pre-incarnate state, was with his Old Testament church. He fed them with himself. He was fulfilling the promise of the covenant of grace: I will be a God to you and to your children. He was with them. He was in the types and shadows and under them. He was not merely foreshadowed and anticipated.

olevianus

Caspar Olevianus (1536-87), in what can be taken as his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism (1567), Firm Foundation, did not see Christ and the covenant of grace merely anticipated in the types and shadows but present in them:

Third, the deity of Christ can be proven from the fact that He spoke with the patriarchs before He had yet come in the flesh. Everything that is said in the Old Testament about the true God Jehovah and His works in and toward all creatures is said as much about Christ as about the Father and the Holy Spirit and thus proves the deity of Christ. When it says that Jehovah, the eternal God, led the people out of Egypt and that the people tempted the true God, the Holy Spirit through Paul (1 Cor. 10[:9]) says that it was Christ: “Let us not tempt Christ, as some of them tempted him and were destroyed by serpents.” And John 8[:58]: “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”²⁴

It was Christ, i.e., speaking anachronistically of God the Son, who led the Israelites out of Egypt. The covenant of grace was present. The Son was present. The Son was saving his people under the types and shadows. For Olevianus the substance of the covenant is one.

He was explicit about this in his exposition of the ninth article of the Apostles’ Creed:

135 Q. Third, why do you call it “one catholic” church?

A. Because just as there is only one Head of the Church, Christ, so also all believers from Adam to the end of the world are His members and one body through the Holy Spirit. All are redeemed through one Head, incorporated into one Head, and preserved in one Head through faith in Him (1 Cor. 12[:12ff.]). From the beginning the Church has always had but one way to eternal life, her single Head, Christ, the only mediator, who crushed the head of the serpent (Rom. 4; 1 Cor. 10). Acts 15:11 reads, “We believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they [our fathers].” As a member of the Church, each believer should apply personally the promises given to the entire Church or people of God, such as the promise found in Matthew 16:18.²⁵

The Old Testament saints were not merely anticipating Christ. They were members of Christ through faith. In his Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed (1576), in his explanation of the eighth article of the Creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” he appealed to 1  Corinthians 10:4, among other places, to support and substantiate the Reformed doctrine of union with Christ:

The union with Christ and His benefits that the Holy Spirit brings about in us is powerfully expressed in Scripture when it says that the Holy Spirit sprinkles us with the blood of Christ (1 Peter 1[:2]), makes us “members of Christ” (1 Cor. 6[:15]), feeds us with Christ (John 6[:50–58]), gives us Christ to drink (1 Cor. 10[:4, 16]; 12), and builds us on Christ (Eph. 2[:20]). Here the office and purpose of the Holy Spirit given to us is shown, namely, that through faith the Spirit might unite us to Christ as closely as possible and might achieve similar results in both members and Head, seeing as it is the same Spirit, the same life and glory (Rom. 8[:1–26]).²⁶

The Old Testament saints were united to Christ by the Spirit, who was operating through the types and shadows, through the external administration of the one covenant of grace. Because both they and we are united to the same Christ, we speak of the church catholic.²⁷

in his largest work explaining covenant theology, On the Substance of the Covenant of Grace Between God and the Elect (1585), under the ninth article of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in a holy catholic church, the communion of the saints,” appealed to 1 Corinthians 10:1–4 as one of the proofs for the Reformed understanding of the unity of the substance of the covenant of grace. The great thrust of the work is indicated by the title of the work: there is one substance of the covenant of grace. The various administrations are, by implication, accidents.

He argued that all the elect, under both the Old and New Testaments, and only the elect, through the whole world have had from the beginning and still have “communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as promised in the Creed.” That communion was administered through “diverse external testimonies” and “clarity of revelation” but just as members of the human body are diverse so it is in redemptive history.²⁸

cocceius

We see the same in Johannes Cocceius (1603–69), in his discussion of the Israelite crossing of the Red Sea:

§322. The Israelites, brought across through the Red Sea, led under the cloud, having drunk from the rock, having eaten manna from heaven, had a symbolical institution about the descent of the Son of God from heaven into flesh, for our communion with Him through faith, about the spiritual consolation and happiness to flow from Christ, as our Rock, and about the communion of the death of Christ for the communion of His life. See 1 Corinthians 10:1–4, where the apostle says, “food, rock, spiritual drink,” because they had πνευματικην δήλωσιν, spiritual significance. Indeed, although it was not said to the Israelites, which the apostle said, i.e., “the rock was Christ,” nevertheless, when it was necessary that they had their eyes intent on the promise and noticed the commemoration of the promise in the works of God, which was happening through a similar thing, it was just as much as if to say to them, “the rock is Christ.” From this it is clear that they tempted Christ and murmured against Christ, because they tempted their rock and provoked it with their murmuring (1 Cor. 10:9–10; Ps. 78:35; Deut. 32:4, 15, 18; Ps. 95:1). The prophecy proclaims Him as “the angel of presence” (Isa. 63:9). See Exodus 23:20–21, “Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for My name is in him.”²⁹

Notice that Cocceius used the noun communion. The Rock was not merely a witness to Christ. It was a means of communion with the glorious Son, who, in time, would become incarnate of the Virgin. According to Cocceius, the Israelites had to do with Christ, as it were—speaking anachronistically—when they tested and murmured against him. God the Son was in, with, and under the types and shadows.

hodge

Charles Hodge (1797–1878) fairly stands for the Reformed consensus, in his comments on 1 Corinthians 10:4:

The rock that followed them was Christ. The Logos, the manifested Jehovah, who accompanied the Israelites in their journey, was the Son of God who took our nature and was the Christ. It was he who met their needs. He was to them the fountain of living waters. He was the spiritual rock from which they drank.³⁰

The rock was the pre-incarnate Son, the Logos, “the manifested Jehovah.”  He continued,

This passage distinctly asserts not only the preexistence of our Lord, but also that he was the Jehovah of the Old Testament. He who appeared to Moses and announced himself as Jehovah, the God of Abraham, who commissioned him to go to Pharaoh, who delivered the people out of Egypt, who appeared on Horeb, who led the people through the wilderness, who dwelt in the temple, who manifested himself to Isaiah, who was to appear personally in the fullness of time, is the person who was born of a virgin and manifested himself in the flesh. Therefore, in the Old Testament he is called an angel, the angel of Jehovah, Jehovah, the Supreme Lord, the Mighty God, the Son of God, one whom God sent and one with him, therefore, as far as substance is concerned, though a distinct person. Our Lord said that Abraham saw his day, for he was before Abraham (John 8:58). John says in John 12:41 that Isaiah saw Christ’s glory in the temple. Paul says that the Israelites tested him in the desert (1 Corinthians 10:9) and that Moses suffered his disgrace (Hebrews 11:26). Jude 5 says that the Lord (Jesus) delivered his people out of Egypt. This truth impressed itself early on in the mind of the Christian church, as is clear from the prayers of the early liturgies.³¹

The Old Testament church, sola gratia, sola fide had the substance of the covenant of grace. They had Christ not merely by prolepsis or by anticipation. He, the substance of the covenant was present with them. According to Reformed theology, the post-lapsarian covenants, the Adamic, the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic (even with republication), the Davidic, and the new covenant are all administrations of the same covenant of grace. Pace our Baptist friends, the Abrahamic was not of a different substance than the covenant of grace.

Conclusion

When the Particular Baptists speak of the benefit of Christ being communicated, it seems as if they mean that a future reality was revealed to the Old Testament saints, which they anticipated but which was not actually present for them. When the Westminster Divines confessed that the benefits of Christ were communicated, however, they meant something rather different. They meant that the substance of the covenant was actually present in, with, and under the types and shadows, and that we share with our Old Testament brothers and sisters, the same covenant of grace and the same substance of that covenant Christ.

Resources

• How To Subscribe To Heidelmedia
• “A House of Cards? A Response to Bingham, Cribben, and Caughey,” in Matthew Bingham, Chris Caughey, R. Scott Clark, Crawford Gribben, and D. G. Hart, On Being Reformed: Debates Over a Theological Identity (London: Palgrave-Pivot, 2018), 69–89.
• John Owen: The New Covenant Is The Abrahamic Covenant Renewed
• John Owen Was Not A Baptist
• John Owen Was Not A Baptist (Part 2)
• John Owen On The Continuity Of The Abrahamic Covenant With the New Covenant
• Update: John Owen Is Still Not A Baptist
• Engaging With 1689
• Jude On The Continuity Of The Covenant Of Grace
• Resources On The Republication Of The Covenant Of Works
• Resources For Those Beginning To Study Covenant Theology
• Covenant Theology & Infant Baptism

NOTES

1. Nehemiah Coxe and John Owen, Covenant Theology From Adam to Christ, ed. Ronald D. Miller et al., (Palmdale, CA: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2005), 30. On Coxe’s covenant theology and the edition published by RBAP used in this essay see Sam Renihan, “Genesis 12 In Nehemiah Coxe’s Covenant Theology.” Whatever the problems in the modern edition, the material point stands, that for Coxe as for Renihan, the Old Testament covenants are one thing (witnesses to the New Covenant) and the covenant of grace another, i.e., the New Covenant. As Renihan writes, “…for Coxe, Abraham isn’t the head of a phase of the administration (outward ordinances) but a separate covenant with its own ordinances, subvervient and typological of the covenant of grace.” In short, for these Particular Baptists: Abraham is Moses. This is a fundamental and irreconcilable difference between Particular Baptist and Reformed theology with necessary consequences for piety and practice.

2. Coxe, A Discourse of the Covenants, in Covenant Theology From Adam to Christ, 57.

3. Coxe, Ibid., 59.

4. Coxe, Ibid., 60.

5. Coxe, Ibid., 61.

6. Coxe, Ibid., 65.

7. Coxe, Ibid., 75.

8. Coxe, Ibid., 75–92.

9. Coxe, Ibid., 93.

10. Coxe, Ibid., 93.

11. Sam and Micah Renihan, “Reformed Baptist Covenant Theology and Biblical Theology” in Richard C. Barcellos, ed. Recovering A Covenantal Heritage: Essays In Baptist Covenant Theology (Palmdale, CA: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2014), 479–80.

12. On March 10, 2020, Sam wrote, “There’s a considerable difference between “a” covenant of works and “the” covenant of works. God tells Abraham and his offspring in Gen 17 that they must “keep” the covenant or be “cut off.” It is corporately guaranteed, but not individually.”

13. Obviously there are some qualifications to be made regarding Moses and David, since they have a temporary legal-national aspect which the Adamic, Noahic, and Abrahamic did not. This dual aspect to the Mosaic, expressed in the Reformed doctrine of republication—a doctrine we do find in Abraham (on which see “Engaging”) and in Owen’s view that the Mosaic (insofar as it was a legal-national covenant was subordinate to the covenant of grace. Baptists reading Owen should remember that, for Owen, Abraham and Moses were distinct and thus they ought not read their conflation of Moses and Abraham back into Owen. For most of the Reformed, the essential function of the republication of the covenant of works was to teach the Israelites (and us as we read the Old, i.e., the Mosaic, Covenant) the greatness of their sin and misery. This was nothing but the 1st or pedagogical use of the law. This pattern is evident in the history of Reformed covenant theology. I have documented this in “Christ and Covenant: Federal Theology in Orthodoxy,” in Herman Selderhuis, ed., Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy (Leiden: Brill, 2013).

14. J. H. Heidegger, The Concise Marrow of Christian Theology, trans. Casey Carmichael. Classic Reformed Theology, ed. R. Scott Clark and Casey Carmichael (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), 93.

15. Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 2: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 219.

16. John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 102. Andrew S. Malone argues that Owen had a relatively limited role for Old Testament manifestations of the pre-incarnate Son. See “John Owen and Old Testament Christophanies,” Reformed Theological Review 63/3 (2004), pp.138–54.

17. Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 767. This approach grows out of the Reformed doctrine, which the Lutherans labeled the extra Calvinisticum, i.e., the view that God the Son operated in redemptive history before his incarnation, and beyond his humanity (hence extra) in the incarnation. This was in contrast to the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity (everywhere-ness; Latin, ubique, everywhere) of the humanity of Christ by virtue of their doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum (communication of the properties). On this see David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology (Leiden: Brill, 1966).

18. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, trans. John Pringle (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 1.317.

19. Calvin, Ibid., 317. Chris Smith, “‘Revealed But Not Concluded:’ A Look at the Relation of the Covenant of Grace to the Historical Covenants in the Thought of Nehemiah Coxe,” unpublished. March 27, 2019. I am indebted to Chris’ research on Coxe, which influenced me and also for pointing me to Sentences 3:5.

20. Calvin, Ibid., 317.

21. Calvin, Ibid., 319.

22. Calvin,  Ibid.,  319–20.

23. Zacharias Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. G. W. Williard (Cincinnati, OH: Elm Street Printing Company, 1888), 346–47.

24. Caspar Olevianus, A Firm Foundation: An Aid to Interpreting the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. Lyle D. Bierma, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Carlisle, United Kingdom; Grand Rapids, MI: Paternoster Press; Baker Books, 1995), 18.

25. Ibid., 97–98.

26. Caspar Olevianus, An Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, trans. Lyle D. Bierma, Classic Reformed Theology, ed. R. Scott Clark (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2009), 124.

27. Ibid., 130.

28. Ideoque omnes & soli electi per universum orbem inde ab initio habuerunt, & etiámnum habent eandem communionem cum Patre, Filio & Spiritu Sancto, qualis in symbolo est promissa, & per partes declarata, cum plenis eius effectis quae sequentur: licet in externis testimoniis fuerit diversitas, & in claritate revelationis, atque copia Spiritus: prout 
in functionibus membrorum humani corporis diversitas est, quae consensum communionis non modò non impedit, sed etiam adiuvat 1. Cor. 12. Rom. 4. v. 23. 24. 25. 1. Cor. 10. v. 1. 2. 3. 4. 9. Ioann. 11. ut non tantùm pro ea gente moreretur, sed Filios Dei cogeret in unum. Sic Ephes. 2. vers. 19. Quoniam utrique per ipsum habemus aditum per unum Spiritum ad Patrem: nempe igitur non ampliùs estis hospites & inquilini, sed concives sanctorum & domestici Dei superstructi super fundamentum Apostolorum ac Prophetarum, cuius imus angularis lapis est Christus Iesus, in quo totum aedificium congruenter coagmentatum crescit, ut sit templum sanctum Domino in quo & vos unà aedificamini, ut sitis habitaculum Dei per Spiritum. Caspar Olevianus, De substantia foederis inter deum et electos (Geneva, 1585), 1.9.6 (pp. 217–18).

29. Johannes Cocceius, The Doctrine of the Covenant and Testament of God, trans. Casey Carmichael, Classic Reformed Theology, ed. R. Scott Clark (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2016), 189–90.

30. Charles Hodge, 1 Corinthians, Crossway Classic Commentaries (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), 165.

31. Hodge, Ibid., 165–66.

Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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