Hello OC,

This isn’t a topic I had particularly sought to discuss with an orthodox roman catholic but since you have taken the time to write a response I’ll try to answer you.

Hello. And thank you for your response. Actually, I found this forum room while I was doing some link chasing of Preterist sites and authors. Just dropped by to see if there was a good discussion on Preterist Eschatology present here, however, when I saw the thread on the covenant (my favorite subject eclessiologically), I just couldn't resist jumping in the pool! <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

To start off, I am not an orthodox Roman Catholic. I am an Orthodox Catholic i.e. aka Greek Catholic. Very very BIG difference, believe me!! And, at least until the Latin Tridentine Mass is returned to the Catholic Church and the Novus Ordo Mess is scrap piled, I don't have much interest in being Roman Catholic.

Secondly, perhaps I need to give you a tad of background. I was in Anabaptist (aka Bob Jones) Fundamentalism for 13 years after I was "saved". From there, I embraced the doctrines of the Reformation as a member of the PCA and spent 12 years there. I have been in the Catholic Faith for only 4 years now.

One thing that might be useful in my contention with paedobaptists is that I would consider their position to be an incomplete reformation of yours (if you’re a good “orthodox roman catholic” that is. ).

I assume therefore you are of the Reformed Baptist persuasion.

There should be a discernible continuum from my views on the Baptist side through theirs to yours. I don’t intend to be hostile or insulting in anything I say so please bear with me.

Au contraire. So far you have been a complete gentleman.



Well, I don't really feel I'm in a quagmire. Particularly not on the issue of baptism and I don't want to divert the thread into other aspects of Roman Catholic Theology if we can help it.

Okay. Perhaps on another thread

You make much of the "legal sounding" terminology we use in discussing covenants. I grant that it is judicial terminology much of it, but it also carries the senses of morality and binding commitment.

Again, covenants do have rules. This is one of Ray Sutton's 5 principles of covenant. He wrote this book as a Protestant. You might feel comfortable reading it to get a better view of the covenant and how it works. He is profoundly much schmarter than I am.

You contrast the judicial model with the matrimonial model, but at root they are the same.

I must disagree. From the very beginning in Genesis, God identifies Himself not as the Great Judge, but as Father(cf Luke 3: 38). He also identifies Himself as King, Judge, Creator, and by many, many other titles. But the appeal we see most often in the NT is the Fatherhood of God. Many of the precepts of the NT are placed in a familial setting, such as, for instance, eternal life being described as "the inheritance." That is a familial term, not a judicial term.

God's perfect justice is as important as His perfect love. He cannot deny either attribute. Have you considered that were it not for the perfect justice of God, sin could simply be ignored and Atonement rendered unnecessary?

Again, I do not see it that way. I would say that the reason sin cannot be ignored is because it is a rupture in love, i.e., the covenantal love between God and mankind. I would say that justice is more in line with God being evenhanded and fair in expressing both His blessing and cursing as people either receiving or ignoring His love

Before I forget OC, I'm afraid those were only my statements and not Dr Owen's. I can post Owen's treatment as an attachment if anyone wants.

Very articulately done. I thought they were Owen's!

We know that marriage is a covenant relationship between husband and wife and the NT makes it clear to us that it also typifies the union of Christ and His Bride, the church. I find your correspondence between the human family and the Trinity highly questionable.

I am still studying it out, but it is one of the main points of covenant theology within the framework of the Catholic Faith.

Was man created in the image of God or was the family.

Remember, the name "Ahw-dahm" (Adam) means MANKIND. Look it up in a Bible dictionary.

I think your plausible analogy here is unbiblical (but then, you never did subscribe to Sola Scriptura...did you?).

Sure I did. And the Catholic Faith places a high importance upon scripture as the foundation of our Faith (which surprised me no little bit when I read that in the Catholic Catechism prior to my conversion!).

Note there are three people in a family only when there is one child. And extended families do distort the picture a bit as well.

WHAT do you mean by "extended families?" And it doesn't matter if there are 12 kids in the family, you still have the same basic structure: covenantal head, helpmeet, offspring. A triad.

Setting that aside for now...what was the great Trinitarian Covenant of Love you allude to? What was its purpose and its ends? Where would you support this idea from in scripture? Now to be fair, the terms Covenant of Grace and Covenant of Works that we work with are extra-Biblical terms, but they are rather shortcuts for theological understandings that we consider in themselves to be Biblical -we just need a shorthand to refer to them.

Yes. It is called "exegesis". May I kindly and without rancor point out that when Catholics do the same thing we are accussed of using "extrabiblical tradition". <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

When the terms are misunderstood or misapplied, then we have scope for error. But we have just as much scope for error when the theology at the root of our terminology is in error. So I don't get too hung up on whether we need everything to be called a "covenant" if it fulfils all the attributes of a binding agreement and settled purpose on the part of God, whether conditional or not (as in the unconditional (!) Noahic Covenant).

Again I must disagree. There is no such thing as an unconditional covenant. All covenants have "oaths/sanctions" as one of their 5 principles. A contract, on the other hand, is unconditional and binding. But salvation is not a contract.

And you're right, you shouldn't argue with scripture.

Which is why I had to become Catholic! <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Did you notice that Adam's son after the fall was created in his (Adam's) image, not God's? (Gen 5:3). That we are no longer born "the children of God"? I'm not going to follow you into RC ecclesiology because we would then be abandoning scripture.

Yes. This is why we need a Savior. We are born carrying that sinful "image of man" within. But in the Orthodox Faith, we reject the notion that there is NOTHING of the image of God left in man as Luther and Calvin posited it. The image is marred -- badly marred -- but it is still there.

Well...the difference would be the federal standing Adam had as head of the human race. His fall took us all down with him. Use whatever terminology you will and you still have to describe the means by which the human race fell. For brevity I would call it the Covenant of Works with Adam because the term is limited to discussion of Adam's rebellious act and its consequences and is understood by most in theological discussions.

But the term "covenant of works" makes it sound like it is a separate covenant from others that came along later. There is only one covenant -- the eternal covenant which exists in the Trinitarian Union. As a created son of God (Luke 3: 38) Adam was created into the covenant of the Blessed Trinity and was subject to all the blessings which obedience would have brought him. Have you ever stopped to wonder what would have happened to Adam had he not sinned? That is a fascinating subject to meditate upon when you consider that Jesus -- the perfect MAN -- is called "the last Adam"

Being part of the familial relationship (remember-- using the word family is but a very poor analogy, as all analogies of God are, of the realationship of the Blessed Trinity) of the Trinity, Adamwsa subject to how a covenant relationship works. This is where "works" come in. What we DO in our bodies is how we show our obedience, love, and faith in God.

How do you account for Adam breaking the relationship for the whole human race?

The principle is called "hierarchy" and the OT is rich in teaching it as a working principle of covenant relationships.

Your comments on the complete absence of human merit for restoration to relation with God we agree on. But, slightly repetitively, how does got justly (in terms of His own perfect Justice) restore us?

This deserves an entire thread of its own. Let me tickle your interest by stating that salvation and eternal life ARE NOT the same thing -- Protestant exegesis teaches that they are, but scripture teaches quite otherwise. I would be glad to discuss this with you, with abundant scripture references of course <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Again, not Owen here, just me.

Sorry again. Your elegance of words puts you in his league

Mr Sutton is just plain wrong about all covenants being conditional. Again I'd cite the Noahic as an example (Gen 9:11-15).

This is why God established a Church with promises to the apostles and those who would continue in their offices that He would guide them into all truth. We see all to many times that a single passage can receive multiple interpretations. Who then is correct and how is that proved?

I read the passage in Genesis 9 and I see something entirely different. God is taking the SOLE SURVIVORS of the Flood and now graciously including them in the eternal covenant. The terms which you consider to make the covenant "unconditional" are to me actually showing how God will administer the covenant from here on out. For instance, in the beginning, the administration of the covenant included no promise that God would not flood the world. Now it does. That is not a change in covenants, nor does it make the covenant "unconditional", it is simply God making clearer the way in which the covenant will work. And as time went by, each generation learned more and more reveal truth about the covenant until the final revelation of covenant came in the person of Jesus Christ.

It is worth noting that the Abrahamic covenant promise was repeated to Abraham's son and grandson to the extent that God made the covenant with all three.

This is the 5th principle of covenant -- called "succession". Covenants pass from generation to generation.

There is a limited sense in which I can agree with some of what you write here, but the two high priests in Christ's time weren't the first abuse of this office.

Ever hear of "the last straw? <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Read Matthew 21: 33 - 46 to see what I am talking about here.

Is there an element of "Open Theism" in your thinking.

Never heard of the term. Explain please!

Can I ask directly if you think the OT Economy "should " have and could have worked, or whether Redemption by Christ's Atonement was always part of God's original plan for this Creation or was Calvary "second best" somehow?

Scripture says that the Old Covenant was inferior to the New, therefore, it was about to pass away (as it did in AD 70). The reason that it was inferior was that it placed an external law upon men where the New Covenant brings the One Who IS the Law to live in the heart and change the man from within. It also provides fulfillment of all the Jewish rites pointing to Christ and gives us the Sacraments which are far superior to the ordinances of the OT.

But in short, the key is that the Old Covenant was a picture (comprising physical Israel, promised land, atonement by blood, separated people, priestly intercession, physical circumcision) of the Realities of the New Covenant

Oooooooooo -- you are so close. Look at this:

Hebrews 8:5 Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.

You see? The whole of the Jewish ritual was a shadow and type of that which is real in Heaven. Since Heaven and God are immutable, then the Christian Faith SHOULD look very, very much like the Jewish Faith, right?

(including Spiritual Israel - the regenerate, heaven, Calvary, the church, Christ's intercession, circumcision of the heart - baptism of the Holy Spirit). My contention remains that paedobaptist views confound OT types and NT Antitypes.

The problem with your eclessiology is that you take the word "spiritual" and make it mean "non physical". That is not the meaning of it. It means that it is indwelt by the Spirit and His action. Take, for instance, the common rejoinder we have to field from Protestants regarding the Eucharist -- that is cannot and is not the REAL Body and Blood of our Christ, the very same that hung from and dripped from the Cross. The appeal is always made to John 6: 66 where our Lord says that His words are "spirit and they are life" Protestants state that this means that what Jesus is saying is not to be taken literally, and then go on to point out that He also says that "the flesh profits nothing" Then they insist that this means that the Eucharist couldn't possibly be true since the "flesh profits nothing"

What they forget, however, is that Jesus DIED IN THE FLESH!! If therefore, the flesh profits nothing, then they are saying in essence that all that He did on the Cross is of no worth -- a thing I doubt they wish to say!!

The true meaning of "spiritual" both in your context and the context of John 6 has to do with the Spirit of God making the Word of God from Jesus lips (and through St. Paul) PROFITABLE to us as opposed to the flesh of man trying to understand spiritual truth without His aid to understanding.

On the contrary...but perhaps it is such a different model to what you're used to that we haven't made it clear yet. Coming from such a different place our vocabulary will be very very different.

As I said earlier, I am well acquainted with the vocabulary. It was the PCA which instilled in me a love for the covenant of God. And eventually, that same study sent me to the Catholic Faith of the Apostles and the Early Fathers.

Finally, here is a link to a website diagram of my understanding of the Historic Baptist view of the CovenantsBaptist Covenant Diagram

Thank you. And thank you for a most civil and welcome discussion on my favorite topic. You, sir, are a gentleman and I appreciate that

Warmest regards in Christ,

Brother Ed