THE COVENANT IN THE SCOTTISH EXPERIENCE
By Dr Peter Barnes
Church History Lecturer PTC SYD.
Introduction
According to James Walker, 'The old theology of Scotland might be emphatically described as a covenant theology.'[1] Hence one of the best-known covenant theologians, James Durham (1622-58), declared that 'A covenant-claim to Christ, is the most solid ground upon which believers can walk in their approaches before him, and in their pleadings with him.'[2] Such an approach invariably raises the issue of how grace is related to works - how God's promises are reconciled to His commands. In 1815 John Colquhoun declared that 'Every passage of sacred Scripture is either law or gospel, or is capable of being referred either to the one or the other.'[3] He added: 'If then a man cannot distinguish aright between the law and the gospel, he cannot rightly understand so much as a single article of divine truth.'[4]
In recent times a number of scholars have asserted that there exists a great gulf between Calvin and Calvinism.[5] Those who adopt this approach often portray Calvin as some kind of 16th century Barthian whose thinking was distorted by his successor, Theodore Beza. From Beza onwards, the development of Calvinism is seen as, in A. T. B. McGowan's caricature, 'a severe and well-nigh fatal case of theological arteriosclerosis'.[6] That, at any rate, is something like the picture painted of English Calvinism by Basil Hall and R. T. Kendall, and of Scottish Calvinism by M. Charles Bell and T. F. Torrance. On this view, the federal Calvinism of Samuel Rutherford, George Gillespie, David Dickson, and James Durham is separated from that of Calvin himself.[7]
In T. F. Torrance's perspective, Calvin and John Knox discerned only one covenant of grace, whereas Andrew Melville and Robert Pollock postulated two.[8] Torrance laments that the Westminster divines 'unfortunately' replaced the Scots Confession and the catechisms.[9] In short: ‘The Confession of Faith does not manifest the spiritual freshness and freedom, or the evangelical joy, of the Scots Confession of 1560, and was not so much a “Confession” as a rational explanation of Protestant theology composed in fulfilment of a constitutional establishment, reflecting the rigid dogmatism of the Synod of Dort, 1618.’[10] As a Church of Scotland minister, he hastens to add that the Westminster Confession is still a work of ‘great theological substance and power, with an intrinsic authority of an impressive kind.’[11]
But that is the end of the Hallelujah Chorus. Torrance even makes the
quite extraordinary charge that The Sum of Saving Knowledge, which is usually attributed (with good reason) to David Dickson (c.1583-1663) and James Durham, gave rise to ‘a rather moralistic and indeed a semi-pelagian understanding of the Gospel.’[12] He adds that the Westminster Confession ‘reversed the teaching of Calvin that it is through union with Christ first that we participate in all his benefits.’[13] M. Charles Bell makes his contribution to the case for the prosecution by asserting that Calvin taught that assurance is of the essence of faith, that Christ died for all mankind, and that self-examination was not a practice to be encouraged, whereas federal theology separates faith and assurance, holds to limited atonement, and saw self-examination as a means of attaining assurance.[14]
Most revealingly, Torrance complains that the Westminster Confession (WCF) begins with the doctrine of Scripture rather than the evangelical substance of the faith.[15] In the Torrance school of thought, a Barthian gospel of Christ crucified is to be preferred to a Calvinistic emphasis on the whole counsel of God. Epistemology is of secondary importance, for God can use all manner of means to make known the gospel of Christ.
Yet even the very being of God Himself is obscured by federal theology. Because God’s eternal being is intrinsically an eternal communion of love, the failure of the WCF to emphasise this love infinitely revealed in Christ means that it is guilty of a Nestorian dualism, and even a form or Arianism or Socianism.[16] George Hendry takes this further, and claims that the WCF reveals not God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ but 'another God, who is unrevealed, and who lacks the attributes of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.'[17]
In short, the sins of federal theology seem to be mortal rather than venial - if those terms are allowed.
The Covenant of Works
The word 'covenant' occurs about 300 times in Scripture, but only in the 17th century did covenant theology really come to the fore. The first clear Scottish exposition of covenant theology seems to have come from Robert Rollock in 1597. According to Bell, this was a departure from Calvin, who supposedly rejected any conditional covenant of works.[18] J. B. Torrance writes even more strongly: 'This distinction between a Covenant of Works and a Covenant of Grace was unknown to Calvin and the Reformers - nor indeed would Calvin have ever taught it.'[19]
Such an assertion is more than doubtful. Calvin did not use the developed covenantal language of the 17th century, but he wrote that 'Adam did not die for himself alone, but for us all'.[20] Furthermore, 'As then we are all lost through Adam's sin, so we are restored through Christ's righteousness'.[21] Adam indeed was on probation, but failed: 'Salvation was offered to all on the condition that they persisted in original innocence.'[22] Peter Lillback's conclusion is most compelling: 'the basic foundation for the existence of a covenant of works in Reformed theology was established by the great Genevan Reformer.'[23]
Unless Hosea 6:7 is understood as referring to Adam (rather than 'man'), there is no specific biblical reference to a covenant of works with Adam. Nevertheless, it is implied in Romans 5:14 and 1 Corinthians 15:45. Adam was told in the Garden to obey God or die (Gen.2:16-17). Unless Adam is the federal head of all humanity, it is difficult to see how there could be an imputation of sin and corruption. Thus original sin is, in the words of the Sum of Saving Knowledge, 'the bitter root of all our actual transgressions' (Head 1). God made man, but man unmade himself.
Mankind is thus left in a pitiable condition. To cite Samuel Rutherford (1600-61): 'Death hath room in the broken Covenant of Works, as the Servant and Sergeant of revenging justice.'[24] Adam on probation failed, and, in Rutherford's words, 'the Covenant of Works is broken, and can now be a way of justification and salvation to none, but yet it obliges all.'[25] James Fergusson (1621-67), commenting on Galatians 3:10, said that 'Those who do not betake themselves to the covenant of grace must stand and fall according to the sentence of the law, or covenant of works'. The law demands exact righteousness, and curses those who cannot supply it.[26]
Writing of the moral law, as summed up in the Ten Commandments, John Colquhoun (1748-1827) asserted: 'It must continue forever without the smallest diminution, and that upon all men, whether saints or sinners; at all times, from the moment of man's creation before the covenant of works, under the covenant of works, under the covenant of grace, and even through all eternity.'[27] To the unregenerate, God's laws are a covenant of works; to the saints they are a rule of duty.[28] To believing Israel, Sinai was never intended to be a covenant of works but a rule of life.[29]
The Covenant of Redemption
Herman Witsius taught that there was a covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son which formed the legal basis for the covenant of grace between God and His elect (cf. Ps.2:7-9; John 6:37; 17:2, 6, 11, 24). Adam Gib (1714-88) and Thomas Boston (1676-1732) believed that the covenant of redemption and the covenant of grace are not two distinct covenants but one and the same covenant. Rutherford usually wrote of two covenants but would nevertheless speak of a covenant of redemption.[30] To David Dickson and James Durham, there were three covenants, and this teaching is found in The Sum of Saving Knowledge. George Hutcheson (1615-74) too wrote of a covenant of redemption.
The covenant of redemption is best viewed as the foundation for the covenant of grace. In this sense, James Walker is correct that there is no real difference between the two views, although Christ was under the law covenant in order that believers might be redeemed from it (Gal.4:4-5).[31] In one of his communion sermons at Glasgow, James Durham set forth the connection between the covenant of redemption and the covenant of grace: 'The gospel doth not, as it were, so much offer to make with you a bargain, as it offers you the benefit of a bargain already made, viz. with Christ.'[32]
The Covenant of Grace
According to the Larger Catechism, this was made with Christ and in Him all the elect (Q.31). In Rutherford's words: 'This do, was the condition of the covenant of works. This believe, is the condition of this covenant, because faith sendeth a person out of himself, and taketh him off his own bottom, that in Christ he may have his righteousness.'[33] Less quaintly, John Colquhoun wrote that 'The covenant of grace revealed and offered to sinners in the gospel is the only covenant according to which a sinner can be justified and entitled to life eternal. It is absolutely impossible that he can be justified according to the broken covenant of works.'[34]
Salvation could only ever come by God's predestinating grace, never by man's free will. As Thomas Boston put it: 'Free grace will fix those whom free will shook down into a gulf of misery.'[35] This is justification by faith in Christ alone whereby, in the words of Thomas Boston: 'God the Father takes the pen, dips it in the blood of His Son, crosses the sinner's accounts, and blots them out of His debt-book.'[36]
Yet the covenant of grace does not eradicate the law. To cite Colquhoun: 'No sooner does the law as a covenant urge men to Christ for deliverance from the dominion of it in that form than Christ leads them back to the law as a rule for the regulation of their heart and conduct, in order that they may express their gratitude to Him for His perfect obedience to it as a covenant in their stead, by their stead, by their sincere obedience to it as a rule (John 14:15).'[37]
It is vital to grasp that the covenant of works is not the Old Testament, nor is the covenant of grace the New Testament. As John Colquhoun pointed out: 'In the Old Testament we find much of the gospel, and in the New we find much of the law.'[38] The covenant of works and the covenant of grace set out the only two possible means of salvation - by human works or by God's free mercy. That was true in the Old Testament period and in the New Testament period - and it is true now.
The Marrow Controversy
A number of relevant issues are raised in the so-called Marrow controversy, so it might be worthwhile to survey briefly the chronology and nature of what took place. While visiting an old soldier's cottage in 1700, Thomas Boston spied a work entitled The Marrow of Modern Divinity, written by E. F. (Edward Fisher). From this work, Boston came to clear views that the covenant of grace was unconditional.
In 1717 the Auchterarder Presbytery insisted that a ministerial candidate, William Craig, give assent to the proposition: 'I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ, and instating us in covenant with God.' Craig refused, and the General Assembly of the same year agreed with him, calling the creed 'unsound and detestable'. In Thomas Boston's view, the creed was 'truth, howbeit not well worded'.[39]
The Marrow men were accused of Antinomianism. The General Assembly condemned the Marrow in 1720, accusing it of saying that assurance is of the essence of faith, preaching a universal atonement, saying that holiness is not necessary to salvation, teaching that fear of punishment and hope of reward are not proper motives for Christian obedience, and declaring that believers are not under the law as a rule of life. It reaffirmed this condemnation in 1722. Boston's response was typical of him: 'I received the rebuke and admonition as an ornament put upon me, being for the cause of truth.'[40]
In the Marrow controversy, the Marrow men proclaimed, in the words of John Preston: 'Go and tell every man without exception, that here is good news for him, Christ is dead for him; and if he will take him and accept his righteousness, he shall have him.' To their opponents, one could not freely offer Christ to all unless He died for all. To Boston, Christ did not die for all, but He is available to all.
Overall, the Marrow controversy generated much ignorance and heat. The Marrow side never managed to present its case well because of the poor phrasing of the Auchterarder creed, and the unimpressive nature of James Hog's pamphlets written in defence of the Marrow.[41] There is a warning here that raising issues is not the same as clarifying them.
The Marrow controversy, however, did establish Thomas Boston as a preacher and theologian of considerable note in the Church of Scotland. Torrance admits - presumably with some consternation - that Boston's Human Nature in its Fourfold State remains 'probably the most influential book in Scottish theology.'[42]
Distortions?
Federal theology has been subject to some trenchant criticisms in recent times. Even in 1645 Samuel Rutherford could refer to these 'much-disputing and over-writing times'.[43] The federal theologians waded into controversy but not all of them revelled in it. Robert Traill (1642-1716) ruefully observed: 'It is a sad but true observation that no contentions are more easily kindled, more fiercely pursued, and more hardly composed, than those of divines.'[44]
Thomas F. Torrance maintains that Calvin's view of the covenant was 'radically altered' through being systematized and schematized, in order to conform to 'a framework of law and grace governed by a severely contractual notion of covenant'.[45] The results were little short of being spiritually disastrous - the Christian life was moralized; faith was intellectualised; and theology was logicalised.[46] In place of God who is love, we find in Scottish theology 'a rather harsh view of God'[47] This, presumably, explains why a Falkirk man had to appear in sackcloth in 1623 for piping on Sunday; a man at Culross was charged with playing golf on Sunday in 1633; an Associate Church member was rebuked in Aberdeen in 1762 for going to hear the Methodists; and, oddly enough, one man was rebuked for riding upon stilts on the Sabbath.[48] On the other hand, one might point out that the schoolmaster at Kirkcaldy was admonished in 1638 for striking a boy till he became sick.[49]
In addition, a logicalised and rationalistic Calvinism was supposedly
open to sceptical attack by the likes of David Hume.[50] It seems that it is more obvious to Torrance than it might be to others that an illogical and irrational neo-orthodoxy would have stopped the Enlightenment dead in its tracks.
Covenant or Contract?
T. F. Torrance says of Samuel Rutherford: ‘his formulation and presentation of doctrine was governed throughout by rigid forensic and logically necessary relations’.[51] The language of the market-place and of a legal compact is supposed to have replaced the language of the Bible. And syllogisms are supposed to have replaced the gospel of grace. It is James B. Torrance's contention that a covenant is unconditional whereas a contract is not.[52] He adds: 'If, as Bonhoeffer has urged, Lutheranism can sometimes turn free grace into cheap grace, Puritan Calvinism can sometimes turn costly grace into conditional grace.'[53]
It is true that Scots theologians could make use of the dreaded word 'contract'. John Colquhoun, for example, wrote of the covenant of works: 'Obedience to the precept is made to give a contractual title to the life promised.'[54] It is also true that Samuel Rutherford was quite capable of indulging his talent for discussing esoteric subjects (e.g. 'Is there anything impossible save as it has its original impossibility from God?') His approach reflects the more scholastic approach of the 17th century as compared to the raw freshness of the 16th century. Yet on the atonement's reconciliation of justice and mercy, Robert Traill warned: 'This mystery is usually rather darkened than illustrated by logical terms used in the handling of it.'[55]
Too much can be made of the admitted differences between the 16th
and 17th century approaches. Rutherford considered that there was
grace even in the law-covenant, and that in the covenant of works, 'Law is honeyed with Love'.[56] The federal theologians spoke the biblical language of love. John Colquhoun wrote: 'The love of God to man is the sum of the gospel; the love of man to God is the sum of the law.'[57] Even if mercantile language was used - and it certainly was - it only reflected the 'buying without money' image which is found, for example, in Isaiah 55. Indeed, this is the language of the Sum of Saving Knowledge - to which one might add Robert Traill's words: 'Surely the terms of the gospel bargains are God's free giving and our free taking and receiving.'[58]
John McLeod Campbell (1800-1872) warned against any belief in a contract-god who needed to be conditioned into being gracious. To McLeod Campbell, if God provides the atonement, then forgiveness must precede the atonement, and the atonement must be the form of the manifestation of the forgiving love of God, and not its cause. He considered that federal theology substituted legal standing for a filial standing as the gift of God to men in Christ.[59] Torrance lauds Campbell as like Athanasius in thinking of the atonement as taking place within the incarnate constitution of the Mediator.[60] As will be seen, all of these criticisms appear to be wide of the mark.
Grace and Election.
J. B. Torrance's charge against federal theology is that it places election before grace, so that the person and work of Christ is subordinated to the doctrine of the decrees.[61] James Walker denied this charge nearly a hundred years before Torrance ever uttered it. Walker, quite rightly, points out that 'The Person of Christ circles like a life-pulse through every doctrine and aspect of doctrine.'[62] William Blaikie too notes that preachers in the Covenanting period tended to overdo it in finding Christ in every verse.[63]
Torrance's point hardly survives an encounter with the evidence. To cite Robert Traill: 'And we know no grace, we call nothing grace, we care for no grace, but what comes from this head, the Saviour of the body.'[64] Thomas Boston was so centred on Christ that he could write: 'I contemned all things in comparison of Him, yea even heaven itself.'[65] Even a cursory survey of Rutherford's letters is enough to justify Blaikie's comment that 'The love and the loveliness of Christ was what Rutherfurd delighted most to proclaim.'[66]
In the Torrance school of Barthianism, grace is objective and unconditional for all. All the teeth of predestination are extracted, as 'the hard conception of double predestination' is especially repudiated as 'biblically and evangelically unfortunate'.[67] Against this, David Dickson (1583-1663) was content to point to Matthew 11:25-26, and write: 'The cause of election of some and reprobation of others, of this or that man, rather than of others, is to be found only in God's good pleasure.'[68]
George Hendry also claims that grace and satisfaction are incompatible. But the federal theologians would reply that grace is free to us, but not to God. Hendry separates grace from justice,[69] but 'Evangelista' in the Marrow of Modern Divinity declared: 'It is unjust to pardon sin without satisfaction.' Thus too Horatius Bonar wrote of law and love: 'The one cannot give way to the other. Both must stand, else the pillars of the universe will be shaken.'[70]
In Samuel Rutherford's view, grace is not separated from justice but fulfils it. This is because God 'cannot be God and essentially just, except he vindicate his glory of justice'.[71] Justice is infinite because God is infinite. Therefore, Boston writes, 'infinite justice can never be completely satisfied by a finite creature; and therefore hell-torments are eternal.'[72] At Calvary, Christ paid 'the least and last farthing' that the justice of God demanded. The law thus can demand no more. As Robert Traill put it: 'Herein justice and mercy kiss one another in saving the sinner.'[73]
Law over Grace.
J. B. Torrance maintains that the WCF gives priority to law over grace by embracing the federal scheme.[74] Any notions of 'preparationism' are repudiated by Torrance and Bell. Bell claims that beginning with the covenant of works or law 'necessarily gives priority to law over grace'.[75] It is difficult to follow the logic of this. The fact that the animals were created before human beings says nothing about their priority or importance. In any case, the federal theologians were hardly saying that there was no grace in the covenant of works.
In contrast, Rutherford taught that the Spirit uses the law to prepare and humble us, for we must be 'plowed' before Christ can be sown in us.[76] Noting Christ's initial rebuff of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30), Rutherford comments that 'It is but Christ's outside that is unkind.'[77] Indeed, 'Christ may give rough answers, when he hath a good mind.'[78] Christ cuts before He cures. When this woman was lying in the dust, Christ would have her lying below the dust.
In Rutherford's view, 'There be some pangs in the new birth.'[79] Men will not flee to the Saviour unless they know that they need to be saved; 'men cannot prize Christ, who have not found the terrors of the law.'[80] 'It is true, all sinners are obliged to believe, but to believe after the order of free grace; that is, that they be first self-lost and sick, and then be saved by the physician.'[81]
John Colquhoun too saw that there had to be a brokenness before there could be healing: 'until self-righteousness is overthrown, a man will never submit to the righteousness of Jesus Christ.'[82] Hence, 'Alarmed by the terrors of the fiery law, let your heart be won to the compassionate Savior by the mild accents of the blessed gospel.'[83] Robert Traill wrote in the same vein: 'They preach the law, to condemn all flesh out of Christ, and to show thereby to people the necessity of betaking themselves to him for salvation.'[84] Faith is therefore 'a lost, helpless condemned sinner's casting himself on Christ for salvation.'[85] No traveller could ever be so weary that he was too tired to lie down.[86]
'Rabbi' Duncan (1796-1870) used to warn that 'Nothing is more pernicious than light definitions of repentance.'[87] There are naturally some dangers in such an approach. Thomas Boston considered that 'there must be used some legal terrors and law-threatenings to drive the fish into the net.'[88] Sometimes this might be overdone, as when a woman said that the severe preaching of Boston as a probationer 'even terrified such as had known [Christ]'![89] On the other hand, Thomas Halyburton (1674-1712) for some time in his life mistook amendment for atonement, and came to the brink of despair: 'I engaged to live a new life with an old heart.'[90] He knew nothing of sanctification at this stage because he knew nothing of justification: 'I never parted with any sin till God beat and drove me from it.'[91]
David Dickson pointed to Christ's universal call in Matthew 11:28, and wrote: 'Although a soul find nothing whereby to commend itself to Christ, but a fruitless life and a loathsome burden of sin, nothing but that which yields restless unquietness, yet without exception of any person all such may come to Christ for relief; none of those who acknowledge their inability to help themselves are excluded.' In fact, Dickson emphasised that there is no bar to anybody coming to Christ, but he considered that only those who were sensible of a burden whereof they cannot be freed by any other means would actually come to Christ.[92]
For all that, John Livingstone (1603-72) wrote of his own conversion in terms which played down the element of crisis. He said: 'I do not remember any particular time of conversion, or that I was much cast down or lift (sic) up.'[93] No doubt this was regarded as exceptional, but it is a reminder that the federal theologians were not 'wooden' in their approach to spiritual matters. William Guthrie (1620-65) argued that some sinners are drawn to Christ without a conscious preparatory work of the law, although he did add that this was ordinarily the means used by Christ.[94] Even Torrance's 'villain', James Durham, declared that 'if it were possible that a soul would come without a sense of sin, grace would embrace it'.[95] He added: 'Grace stands not on the want of any effect of faith, where it calls to believing: It will not stand on darkness of interest, nor on want of progress in sanctification, nor on things being out of order; for, where it comes, it puts things in order.'[96]
T. F. Torrance maintains that in the New Testament it is the Gospel, not the law, which reveals both the real depth of sin and the universal depravity of unregenerate human nature.[97] The Sum of Saving Knowledge also affirms that not believing in Christ is 'a greater and more dangerous sin than all other sins against the law'.[98] The theologically eccentric James Fraser of Brae (1638-1698) tried to popularise the term 'Gospel wrath'. Certainly, to reject the Gospel is more heinous than to reject the Law (Matt.11:20-24; Heb.10:28-29).[99] Furthermore, the Gospel is to be obeyed (2 Thess.1:7-8; Rom.10:16; 1 Pet.4:17).
Nevertheless, Torrance's view is lop-sided. Surely it is both law and gospel that reveal sin (note Rom.3:20 for the law, and Gal.6:2; 1 Pet.2:4-5,9; Tit.2:11-14; 2 Cor.7:1 for the obligations of the gospel). Rutherford could proclaim, in his own lyrical and flowery way: 'Grace, grace now is the only oil to our wheels.'[100] Grace must triumph in the life of the elect despite the ravages of sin: 'God's decree of grace in the execution of it, may be broken in a link by some great sin; but Christ cannot but solder the chain, and raise the fallen sinner.'[101]
John Colquhoun spoke the same language: 'The law condemns a sinner
for his first offense, but the gospel offers him the forgiveness of all his offenses.'[102] Grace was the resounding note sounded by Colquhoun: 'The law wounds and terrifies the guilty sinner; the gospel heals and comforts the guilty sinner who believes in Jesus.'[103] Robert Traill echoed the language of the apostle Paul: 'If a man trusts to his own righteousness, he rejects Christ's; if he trust to Christ's righteousness, he rejects his own.'[104]
Yet grace is not the same as wantonness, and Rutherford pointed out that 'Grace and condemnation are opposite, but not grace and the commanding power of the law.'[105] The WCF also declares that Christ strengthens the obligation of the law (WCF XIX:v). Thus there is a difference between godly and worldly sorrow over sin (2 Cor.7:10). In Thomas Halyburton's experience: 'Sorrow formerly flowed from discoveries of sin as it brings on wrath; now it flowed from a sense of sin as containing wretched unkindness to One who was astonishingly kind to an unworthy wretch.'[106]
Faith and Assurance.
Federal theology is accused of bringing in a lack of assurance, by detaching faith from assurance, looking for evidences of true faith, and by adhering to limited atonement. So when federal theologians are not harsh, they are subjective. Hence the criticisms of William Guthrie's The Christian's Great Interest, - which Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) thought the greatest book that he had ever read and which John Owen thought contained more theology than all the tomes he himself had written.
M. C. Bell makes much of James Durham's supposed lack of assurance on his deathbed,[107] but he fails to tell the whole story. John Howie admits that Durham, who was only 35 when he died, was 'under considerable darkness about his state', and wondered whether he could rest upon the offer of John 6:37, 'Whosoever cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out'. John Carstair's brother replied comfortingly: 'You may depend upon it, though you had a thousand salvations at hazard.' According to Howie, Durham died full of assurance, crying out: 'Is not the Lord good? Is he not infinitely good? See how he smiles! I do say it, and I do proclaim it.'[108]
One might also cite the words of Hugh MacKail on the scaffold: 'Farewell father and mother, friends and relations - farewell the world and all delights - farewell meat and drink - farewell sun, moon, and stars - welcome God and Father - welcome sweet Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the new covenant - welcome blessed Spirit of grace, and God of all consolation - welcome glory - welcome eternal life, and welcome death.'[109] It seems that federal theology did not always make for tortured consciences.
It is often contended that the Reformers equated faith with assurance, while their successors did not. There is some truth in this assertion as a tendency but overall it lacks reality. Thomas Halyburton commented on 'how nearly allied faith and assurance are though they are not the same'. He added: 'no wonder the one should be taken for the other'.[110] That is probably closer to both the 16th and 17th century views of assurance and faith than is the picture painted by Torrance and Bell.
Pointing to the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7, Rutherford noted that
Christ was seeking her, yet appeared to fly from her.[111] Even as Christians, said Rutherford, 'we are half-night half-day'.[112] Believers can doubt (Jer.15:18; 20:7-9, 14-16; Job 13:14; Ps.73:13; 77: 88:13-15). Rutherford heartily approved of Richard Sibbes' treatment of Christ's tender dealings with the bruised reed, and claimed that 'babes weak in the faith in this Kingdom do far exceed the number of the strong and aged in Christ'.[113] In a similar vein, Robert Traill pointed to Mark 9:24, and to Abraham's waverings in Genesis 12 and 20, and commented that 'the best of believers have unbelief in some measure in them'.[114]
Boston claimed that 'A child of God may lose the sense of his pardon, but the pardon itself is written in the Mediator's blood.'[115] In Boston's quaint language: 'One may go to heaven in a mist'.[116] Or Rutherford: 'Faith is a grace for winter, to give God leisure to bring summer in his own season.'[117] From John 6:37, George Hutcheson saw a difference between being cast off and being cast out. He wrote: 'Saints do indeed ofttimes complain of casting off, but they are the words of sense and not of faith; they may seem to be cast off when really it is not so; they may lose degrees of fellowship for a time, but cannot be deprived of it totally, and for ever'.[118] A weak faith - as opposed to a false faith - is still true and saving. Hence Horatius Bonar (1808-89) wrote: 'With a weak faith and a fearful heart many a sinner stands before the altar. But it is not the strength of his faith, but the perfection of the sacrifice, that saves'.[119]
Boston used an illustration to point out that what mattered was evidence of regeneration rather than evidence of perfection. 'Mud thrown into a pool may lie there at ease; but if it be cast into a fountain, the spring will at length work it out, and run as clear as formerly.'[120] Boston was a long way from basing assurance on sinless perfection: 'The best carry about with them the tinder of a corrupt nature, which they cannot be rid of while they live, and which is liable to be kindled at all times, and in all places: yea, they are apt to inflame others, and become the occasions of sinning.'[121]
The biblical teaching on assurance is not as straightforward as Torrance
and Bell maintain. Boston cites Rutherford to the effect that there are two types of assurance - one of which is part of saving faith and one which follows saving faith.[122] The first kind is direct, the second is a reflex act of the soul.
Citing John Knox's view that 'from a livelie faith do good works spring', M. C. Bell declares that 'Unwittingly, Knox has weakened assurance of salvation by referring it to man's sanctification.'[123] Rutherford pointed to the need to add to faith in giving assurance by citing 2 Peter 1:10 - a verse which was often cited by federal theologians. Torrance and Bell both miss the biblical point that obedience, rightly understood, is meant to increase assurance (2 Pet.1:5-7, 10; 1 John 2:3, 5). Hence Colquhoun warned: 'Without the diligent performance of good works, no believer can attain assurance of his personal interest in eternal salvation, far less establishment in that assurance.'[124]
Contrary to Matthew 7:21-23 and the parable of the sower (Matt.13:1-23), Torrance and Bell do not seem to believe that there can be such a thing as a false faith. Rutherford, on the other hand, warned: 'Antinomians, rejoicing forevermore after justification, without sorrow, remorse, down-casting for sin at all, is but fleshly wantonness.'[125] He warned that 'A dead faith is no saving and living faith, no more than a dead corps is a living man'.[126] Boston too claimed that 'the neglect of self-examination leaves most men under sad delusions as to their state, and deprives many saints of the comfortable sight of the grace of God in them.'[127] In Boston's terms, one might receive 'awakening grace, but not converting grace'.[128] Indeed, 'there is no grace but a hypocrite may have the counterfeit of it'.[129]
The federal theologians actually taught both an objective ('look to Jesus') and a subjective ('examine yourselves') basis to assurance. Bell declares that Rutherford taught that certainty can only be achieved as 'a result of self-examination and syllogistic deduction',[130] but in fact, Rutherford taught that Christ's atonement is 'better and surer than your feeling'.[131] What to Rutherford is a matter of both/and is to Bell a matter of either/or.
Similarly, 'Rabbi' Duncan (1796-1870) is well-known for suffering from a lack of assurance. Hence he was sometimes reluctant to take part in the Lord's Supper. He would say: 'I am sure that Jesus is the Christ, but I am not sure that I am a Christian.'[132] Yet he also recognized the solution: 'As long as I am thinking of Christ I'm happy.'[133] On his death bed in 1662, David Dickson told John Livingstone: 'I have taken all my good deeds, and all my bad deeds, and have cast them together in a heap before the Lord, and have fled from both to Jesus Christ, and in Him I have sweet peace.'[134] Federal theology did not of itself make for an unhealthy introspection. William Guthrie was unafraid to preach that the way of salvation was 'now most easy'![135]
John Colquhoun was quite explicit in laying an objective basis for assurance: 'When a true believer is at any time in doubt of his justification and title to eternal life, he ought to set the law as a covenant, and the works of the law, entirely aside, and to rely anew, for all his title to life eternal, on the spotless righteousness of the second Adam offered to him in the gospel.'[136] Yet this did not hinder him from drawing implications from this: 'Everyone, then, who knows by experience the boundless grace of the gospel will perform sincere, cheerful, and constant obedience to the law as a rule.'[137]
Torrance's criticisms come from trying to reduce the biblical message to a few simple slogans. Robert Leighton (1611-84) warned against trying to derive much comfort from ourselves: 'They will not believe till they find some evidence, which is quite to invert the order of the thing, and to look for the fruit without settling a root for it to grow from.' Yet he by no means dismissed the need for a faith that worked by love: 'His love makes sure ours. He hath such a hold of our hearts as He will not let go, nor suffer us to let go our hold: all is fast by His strength. He will not lose us, nor shall any be able to pluck us out of His hand.' Hence the contrast between the Christian as he is in himself and as he is in Christ: 'When he views himself in himself, then he is nothing but a poor, miserable, perishing wretch; but then he looks again, and sees himself in Christ, and there he is rich, and safe, and happy.'[138]
Evidences of True Faith.
The federal theologians sought to walk the narrow way between the twin evils of legalism and antinomianism. Samuel Rutherford maintained that ‘A believing faith must be a working faith.’[139] He warned against what he called a 'fleshly laziness'.[140] Believing and doing are 'blood-friends'.[141] Justification by faith was vigorously taught by Rutherford: 'Bring hell, and sins red as scarlet and crimson; come and be washen: come at the eleventh hour, and welcome; fall, and rise again in Christ; run away, and come home again, and repent.'[142] Nevertheless, 'faith' was not understood in any Sandemanian sense; it is not simply mental assent to the doctrines of the gospel. Not for nothing was John Glas deposed by the presbytery of Dundee in 1728. Justification, preached Rutherford, is 'not formally an act of the understanding, to know a truth concerning myself; but it is an heart-adherence of the affections to Christ, as the Saviour of sinners, at the presence of which, a sentence of free absolution is pronounced.'[143]
Because of such a view of saving faith, Torrance thinks that, so far as assurance is concerned, in The Sum of Saving Knowledge, believers were ‘in the last analysis thrown back upon themselves.’[144] He refers to what he calls the 'new moralism' of the Larger Catechism.[145] Justification by faith came, in effect, to mean justification by faith and obedience. At least, that is Torrance's accusation. But the federal theologians were only echoing what Calvin himself believed, that 'believers are taught to examine themselves carefully and humbly, lest the confidence of the flesh creep in and replace assurance of faith.'[146]
Robert Leighton - the Episcopalian Calvinist - taught: 'The great evidence of thy election is love. Thy love to Him gives certain testimony of his preceding eternal love to thee: so are the elect here designated, "they that love God."'[147] Thomas Boston too taught that 'Men therefore should not question whether they be elected or not, but first believe on Christ, and endeavour diligently to work out their own salvation; and if their works be good, and their obedience true, thereby they will come to a certain knowledge that they were elected and set apart to everlasting life.'[148]
Torrance claims that by focusing on evidence of true faith, Boston undermined the objective ground of assurance.[149] Boston certainly taught that love of the brethren, prayer, love of the Bible, concern for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ in the world, and holiness are all evidences of grace. 'Look in,' he wrote, 'and see. Grace is light, and discovers itself.'[150] The unholy person could be assured that his sins were not pardoned for if the guilt of sin is taken away so too is its reigning power. Like the Bible, Boston asserts that 'We are justified by faith without works, but that faith that justifies is always followed with good works.'[151] James Fergusson said that faith alone justifies but is always accompanied with the grace of love to God and our neighbour.[152] In Colquhoun's words, obedience is not for life but from life.[153]
Torrance tries to separate justification from sanctification in a way that federal theology - and the Bible for that matter - does not. To cite Boston: 'Justification and sanctification are indeed inseparable. In vain do they pretend to be justified who are not sanctified; and in vain do they fear they are not justified, who are sanctified by the Spirit of Christ, 1 Cor.6.11. But yet they are distinct benefits, not to be confounded, nor taken for one and the same.'[154] Rutherford spoke the same language: 'Justification taketh the sting out of the serpent, but doth not formally kill the serpent; the serpent is killed by another act of grace, by infused and perfected sanctification.'[155]
In John Colquhoun's view, the law has 'a sanction of gracious rewards and paternal chastisements' in the life of the believer.[156] He distinguished between three kinds of morality: 'Heathen morality is external obedience to the law of nature, and may be termed "natural religion." Pharisaic righteousness is hypocritical obedience to the law as a covenant of works, and is usually called "legal righteousness," or "the works of the law." True holiness is spiritual and sincere obedience to the law as a rule of life in the hand of the blessed Mediator, and is commonly called "evangelical holiness," or "true godliness."'[157] This 'evangelical holiness' was a necessary fruit of saving faith: 'Sooner might fire be without heat, and a solid body be without weight, than a true faith of the gospel be without evangelical holiness.'[158] Colquhoun could even proclaim that 'Good works are necessary to salvation'[159] - not for justification, but as the necessary evidence of that justification. As Calvin himself put it: 'Christ justifies no one whom he does not at the same time sanctify.'[160]
The federal theologians were aware of the dangers of using fruit as the evidence of saving faith. They knew that evidences contribute nothing to justification, that sinners must look to Christ rather than the evidences, and that even the evidences are a result of God's grace. Horatius Bonar declared: 'We need sensitive but not morbid consciences to keep us stedfast in the faith'.[161] John Colquhoun pointed to both objective and subjective grounds for the believer's assurance - do you cordially believe the doctrines of the glorious gospel, love this gospel, and in some measure delight in the law of God after the inward man?[162]
A legal spirit in the believer was, in Colquhoun's view, something to be shunned: 'If you trust your habits of grace rather than the fullness of grace in Christ; if you derive your comfort from your lively frames and religious attainments rather than from Christ and the promises, and if you make either the good dispositions planted in you or the good works performed by you the ground of your right to trust daily in Him for salvation, instead of trusting in Him upon the ample warrant afforded you by the offers and calls of the gospel, by doing so you will assuredly decline from holy and cheerful obedience to the law as a rule of life.'[163] Halyburton too came to write: 'I saw the evil of legal preaching.'[164]
J. B. Torrance and M. Charles Bell see a continuity between the
Marrow men and John McLeod Campbell.[165] However, Boston believed that though assurance is of the essence of faith, there are varying degrees. Campbell formally denied this, although he was forced to say that a believer might experience doubts, darkness and temptations - but not habitually! He preached that the fruits are 'additional proofs of the great truth we believe at first.'[166] It was McLeod Campbell who wrote: 'If we refuse to be in Christ the brothers of men, we cannot be in Christ the sons of God.'[167] In the end, this is not far from the kingdom of federal theology. One cannot preach that fruits are additional proofs without logically raising the issue of how to evaluate a professing believer whose life does not exhibit such fruits in any way. Yet other differences remain. Boston believed in self-examination, but Campbell did not; while Boston believed in limited atonement; and Campbell in universal atonement.
Limited Atonement
The Larger Catechism maintains that 'Redemption is certainly applied, and effectually communicated, to all those for whom Christ has purchased it' (Q. 59). This is the teaching too of David Dickson, and indeed virtually all of the federal theologians. To John McLeod Campbell, this was an arbitrary act, which could not reveal the character of God, which is love.[168]
All of the criticisms of federal theology by Torrance and Bell are
intertwined. Hence the charge that lack of assurance came from the doctrine of limited atonement.[169] In the Torrance view - whether T. F. or J. B. - Calvin taught that Christ died for all men, and this was also taught by the Scots theologians of the 16th century. By the 17th century this was replaced by the notion of limited atonement, which, in T. F. Torrance's view, has done 'immense damage in Scottish theology'.[170] In Torrance's view, Robert Leighton helped people over the 'the insidious problem of assurance that seemed to afflict so many of them in Calvinist Scotland.'[171] He apparently achieved this by teaching that Christ died for all.
In fact, the Torrance view that Christ dies for all but does not save all hardly makes for assurance. If Christ's death is not sufficient for the salvation of the sinner, the objective ground for assurance is undermined - contrary to Torrance's intention. In any case, the federal theologians did not ground their assurance immediately on their grasp of election but worked back from their coming to Christ. Hence George Hutcheson wrote, with regard to John 6:37: 'Such as really come to Christ and embrace him have not only the present comfort of communion with him, but are warranted from this to gather their eternal election, and that they have been given over to Christ, and committed to his charge and care; therefore is their coming put as an effect and evidence of their being given.'[172]
Thomas Boston held to limited atonement, and so wrote of Christ: 'There is no universal redemption; nor universal atonement. Jesus Christ died not for all and every individual person of mankind; but for the elect only.' In fact, he feared that those who held that the covenant of redemption and that of grace were two distinct covenants could then hold to a universal redemption.[173] Nevertheless, he believed that the reprobate have as good a warrant to believe and take hold of the covenant of grace as the elect have. Rutherford too proclaimed that 'Christ cometh once with good tidings to all, elect and reprobate.'[174] Robert Traill too wrote: 'Tell him of Christ's ability and goodwill to save; that no man was ever rejected by him who cast himself upon him; that desperate cases are the glorious triumphs of his art of saving.'[175] He added: 'we tell sinners that Jesus Christ will surely welcome all that come to him; and, as he will not cast them out for their sinfulness, in their nature and past life, so neither will he do so for their misery, in the want of such qualifications and graces as he alone can give.'[176]
Writing of John Craig (1512-1600), Torrance asserts 'the vast difference between Craig's radically christocentric doctrine of God and of Christ's atoning satisfaction offered once for all, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the federal concept of God as primarily the omnipotent lawgiver who required to be appeased if we are to be saved.'[177] In J. B. Torrance's caricature: 'the Father has to be conditioned into being gracious by the obedience and the satisfaction of the Son'.[178]
That is grossly misleading. Samuel Rutherford asserted the primacy of the love of God, declaring that if God’s love has a beginning, Christ has a beginning. He went on: ‘Christ loves you better than His life, for He gave His life to get your love.’[179] Nowhere do we find orthodox federal theologians teaching that Christ's satisfaction won the love of the Father. On the contrary, to cite Rutherford: 'the shed blood of Christ is an effect, not a cause of infinite love.'[180] When McLeod Campbell pointed out that the Scriptures 'represent the love of God as the cause, and the atonement as the effect',[181] he was hardly saying anything new.
The federal theologians believed in a universal and gracious offer of the gospel, but a special love of God for the elect. Pointing to Christ's lament over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37, David Dickson said that Christ, as man moved with humane compassion, fulfilled the law of love to His most desperate enemies.[182] As Samuel Rutherford put it: ‘Christ offers in the Gospel life to all, so that they believe, but God mindeth to bestow life on a few only.’[183] God’s love is infinite in its act, but not in its object or extent. This is Calvinism, not as Torrance thinks, extreme hyper-Calvinism.[184]
In Torrance's view: 'A God who restricts his love to a fixed number of the elect is not a God who IS Love and therefore is not as infinitely loving as his infinite Being.'[185] Bell too maintains that 'the Federal teaching itself raises questions about God's veracity and love.'[186] To cite John McLeod Campbell (1800-1872): 'if God is love, then of necessity God loves every man'.[187] One can only wonder how predestined children of God could ever be accounted children of wrath (Eph.2:3). Horatius Bonar's solution to the problem is not without its own problems. Nevertheless, he declared that 'God loves the sinner; but He hates the sin.'[188]
McLeod Campbell was deposed from the ministry in 1831 for teaching, in his own obscure style, that Christ died for all, and that assurance is of the essence of faith. J. H. S. Burleigh applauds McLeod Campbell's work on The Nature of the Atonement as 'Scotland's greatest contribution to theology.'[189] It certainly fitted in with