Law, Gospel, And Covenant: Reassessing Some Emerging Antitheses

By Michael S. Horton

[Michael Horton is Associate Professor of Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Escondido, California.]

At present there is considerable debate within conservative Reformed and Presbyterian churches over the precise nature of covenant theology. While much of this debate has been prosecuted over websites and e-mails rather than in journals and monographs, it will be well-known to readers of this journal.[1] On the one hand, there are those who regard the classic formulations of covenant theology (elucidated below) as not only consistent with but essential for an adequate articulation and defense of the evangelical doctrine of justification. According to this perspective, one of the marvelous benefits of covenant theology is that, while clearly emphasizing justification sola fide, it also provides for the integration of sanctification and other aspects of union with Christ. It is unwarranted, then, to reduce salvation to a choice between “forencism” and “relationship,” since “covenant” provides the context in which every soteriological theme is stamped with simultaneously forensic and relational aspects.

On the other hand, there are those who argue that the dominant interpretation of Reformed orthodoxy (perhaps even the confessions themselves) is unduly influenced by Lutheran categories and concerns. While these tendencies have pushed Reformed orthodoxy repeatedly into forcing a biblically unwarranted antithesis between “law” and “gospel,” so it is argued, the bipolar nature of the covenant of grace (incorporating both divine initiative and obedient human response) offers a more biblically balanced approach that avoids both legalism and antinomianism. The choice is clear for such writers: embrace a Lutheran law-gospel hermeneutic or a Reformed covenantal alternative. For many proponents of this view, this same choice invites corollary antitheses between systematic and biblical theology, “scholasticism” and “biblicism,” the legal and the relational. If the alleged antithesis between law-gospel and covenantal paradigms can be shown to be false, perhaps we can then move on to discredit the unwarranted oppositions implied by the other pairs.

Our purpose in this brief space is not to explore potential sources for the internecine controversy, nor to provide a detailed analysis of this vast topic, but to indicate briefly in fairly broad strokes how the Reformed position came to its distinctively covenantal understanding of theology precisely through its reflection on the relation of law and gospel. We do not intend here to defend the system or any aspect of it, but to correct a growing tendency to sharply contrast a “law- gospel” paradigm (allegedly peculiar to Lutheranism) and a “covenantal” paradigm (uniquely Reformed). While the latter may be broader and more successful at providing a more ample account of the exegetical data, it is hardly inimical to the former, as the historical development of covenant theology demonstrates.

I. Continental Development

As early as the first page of what, after his death, became his Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, Zacharias Ursinus states, “The doctrine of the church is the entire and uncorrupted doctrine of the law and gospel concerning the true God, together with his will, works, and worship.”[2] He then elucidates what was to be a typical Reformed statement of the distinction that was held in common with the Lutheran confession:

The doctrine of the church consists of two parts: the Law, and the Gospel; in which we have comprehended the sum and substance of the sacred Scriptures…. Therefore, the law and gospel are the chief and general divisions of holy scriptures, and comprise the entire doctrine comprehended therein … for the law is our schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ, constraining us to fly to him, and showing us what that righteousness is, which he has wrought out, and now offers unto us. But the gospel, professedly, treats of the person, office, and benefits of Christ. Therefore we have, in the law and gospel, the whole of the Scriptures comprehending the doctrine revealed from heaven for our salvation…. The law prescribes and enjoins what is to be done, and forbids what ought to be avoided: whilst the gospel announces the free remission of sin, through and for the sake of Christ…. The law is known from nature; the gospel is divinely revealed…. The law promises life upon the condition of perfect obedience; the gospel, on the condition of faith in Christ and the commencement of new obedience.[3]

Ursinus, in fact, converted from the Lutheran to the Reformed confession and his view had already been amplified by Bullinger and Calvin, two figures in the tradition who were widely known to disagree from time to time.[4] Theodore Beza made precisely the same point in his Confession—in fact, employing nearly the same terms and order of discussion, only adding the warning that “ignorance of this distinction between Law and Gospel is one of the principal sources of the abuses which corrupted and still corrupt Christianity.”[5] In fact, in his Reformed Symbolics Wilhelm Niesel observes, “Reformed theology recognises the contrast between Law and Gospel, in a way similar to Lutheranism. We read in the Second Helvetic Confession: ‘The Gospel is indeed opposed to the Law. For the Law works wrath and pronounces a curse, whereas the Gospel preaches grace and blessing.’”[6]

Mastricht warns against those (he has Rome chiefly in view) who would turn the gospel into a “new law,” neglecting both the real demands of the law and the real freedom of the gospel. The “works of the law” demand “most punctilious obedience (‘cursed is the man who does not do all the works therein’).” Only in this context, says Mastricht, can we possibly understand the role of Jesus Christ as the “fulfiller of all righteousness.”

Heb. 2.14-15 (since the children are sharers in blood and flesh, he also in like manner partook of the same; that through death he might bring to nought him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil)…. If you say the apostle is speaking of a covenant not in Paradise, but the covenant at Sinai, the answer is easy, that the Apostle is speaking of the covenant in Paradise so far as it is re-enacted and renewed with Israel at Sinai in the Decalogue, which contained the proof of the covenant of works.[7]

A further argument, says Mastricht, is the following: “Synonyms of the covenant of works are extant in the NT Rom. 3.27 (where is the glory? It is excluded. By what manner of law? Of works? Nay: but by a law of faith) Gal. 2:16 (knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law save through faith in Jesus Christ … because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified).”[8] In addition to the exegetical arguments, Mastricht adduces the intrasystematic importance of the doctrine:

To very many heads of the Christian religion, e.g., the propagation of original corruption, the satisfaction of Christ and his subjection to divine law Rom. 8.3-4 (what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit) Gal. 3:13 (Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us …), we can scarcely give suitable satisfaction, if the covenant of works be denied.[9]

Olevianus, co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism, sees in the original covenant’s prohibition the essence of the whole law—love of God and neighbor.[10] And in this state Adam could expect—for himself and his covenant heirs— royal entrance into the consummation, the Sabbath rest of God himself, and everlasting confirmation in righteousness. In the words of the Formula Consensus Helvetica, “the promise annexed to the covenant of works was not just the continuation of earthly life and felicity,” but of a confirmation in righteousness and everlasting heavenly joy.[11]

The continental Reformed theologians during and immediately following the Reformation period were unanimous in this respect and the significant structural place that they give to “Law and Gospel” in their systems is evident even as recently as Louis Berkhof’s opening to his section “The Word of God as a Means of Grace.”[12] J. Van Bruggen adds more recently, “The [Heidelberg] Catechism, thus, mentions the gospel and deliberately does not speak of ‘the Word of God,’ because the Law does not work faith. The Law (Law and gospel are the two parts of the Word which may be distinguished) judges; it does not call a person to God and does not work trust in him. The gospel does that.”[13]

Typically, early Reformed presentations dealt richly and subtly with the respects in which the law and the gospel both agreed and differed, and especially from Calvin on they tended to give more place to the christocentric and positive character of the law in its third use than was usually found in Lutheran approaches (following Luther’s rather hyperbolic declaration, legis semper accusa). Yet while avoiding potential (Lutheran) reductionism, they nevertheless upheld the Pauline emphasis on antithesis wherever reconciliation with God is concerned. Calvin says that his critics “still do not observe that in the contrast between the righteousness of the law and of the gospel, which Paul elsewhere introduces, all works are excluded, whatever title may grace them [Gal. 3:11–12]…. [N]ot even spiritual works come into account when the power of justifying is ascribed to faith.” It is the chief mistake of the medieval scholastics, “who mingle their concoctions,” to “… interpret the grace of God not as the imputation of free righteousness but as the Spirit helping in the pursuit of holiness.”[14]

Calvin knew well that late medieval nominalism had attempted its own covenant theology in which final justification was dependent on obedience but not on merit, strictly speaking (de condigno): “And this shows how deluded the Sophists are,” he writes, “who thought they had neatly got around all these absurdities [of confusing law and promise] by saying that works of their own intrinsic goodness are of no avail for meriting salvation but by reason of the covenant, because the Lord of his own liberality esteemed them so highly.”[15]

II. Puritan Development

Lestwe give in to the temptation to contrast continental Reformed and British (Puritan) Presbyterian traditions at this point, the earliest representatives of the latter display the same debt. Robert Rollock, a pioneer of federal (covenant) theology to whom continental as well as English and Scottish divines appealed, specifically developed the covenant of works/covenant of grace scheme in view of the law-gospel antithesis.[16] William Perkins, father of Elizabethan Puritanism, taught practical theology to generations of students through his Art of Prophesying (1592; ET 1606). In that work he asserts, “The basic principle in application is to know whether the passage is a statement of the law or of the gospel. For when the Word is preached, the law and the gospel operate differently. The law exposes the disease of sin, and as a side-effect stimulates and stirs it up. But it provides no remedy for it…. The law is, therefore, first in the order of teaching; then comes the gospel.”[17] We must be attentive, he says, to the ways in which even inspired Old Testament expressions of law are made in the New Testament inspired expressions of gospel. He cites Deuteronomy 20:11, 14: “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off … But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.” “This same sentence which is legal in character in Moses,” Perkins points out, “is evangelical in character in Paul (Rom. 10:8).”[18] Even believers need to hear the Bible preached and applied with a clear view of this distinction. “Our sanctification is partial as yet. In order that the remnants of sin may be destroyed we must always begin with meditation on the law, and with a sense of our sin, in order to be brought to rest in the gospel.”[19]

While subtle differences of nuance may be discerned between the Three Forms of Unity and theWestminster Standards on other points, the latter affords some of the most succinct statements of this consensus of federal Calvinism.[20]

It is replete in the sermons and theological treatises of Episcopal Puritans like Perkins and Archbishop Ussher; Presbyterian Puritans like Thomas Cartwright and Thomas Watson; and Independents like John Owen and Thomas Goodwin.

Emphasis on covenant conditionality, however, was not without its patrons. Petrus Dathenus, author of the Dutch Reformed liturgy adopted at the Convent of Wessels, wrote a winsome little dialogue with an English noblewoman who suffered from a lack of assurance due to an emphasis on the human side of the covenant. His Pearl of Christian Comfort takes as its main thesis that its interlocutor did not know how to distinguish law and gospel properly because of the preaching that she was evidently having to endure.[21] Puritan preaching was, especially in its late phase, given to extremes. Charges of neonomianism and antinomianism dominate the literature. In the Marrow Controversy, a rediscovered theological text from 1645, which had been celebrated by its contemporaries, was now, less than a century later, vilified as “antinomian” by the Church of Scotland. The controversy indicted the writings of unblemished Puritan fathers such as John Preston for regarding salvation entirely as “a deed of gift and grant.” Eventuating in the Secession of 1733, the controversy shows that the dominant sentiments in the Church of Scotland in that period were so far removed from those of the Reformation that the standard Reformed orthodoxy enshrined in the Westminster Standards could be condemned as antinomian heresy.[22]

But all along, a clear trajectory emerges. Those who emphasized a distinction between the covenant of works and covenant of grace (law and gospel) discerned nothing less than the spirit of neonomianism or legalism in their fellow churchmen who blurred that distinction. One recalls in this vein the charges of John Owen and Thomas Goodwin against Richard Baxter and others for whom a rejection of the classic formulation of covenant theology seemed to go hand-in-hand with a rejection of a purely forensic justification.

Even those who found themselves on opposite sides in many debates, like Cocceius and Voetius, jointly emphasized the absolute and unconditional foundation of the covenant and saw the law-gospel distinction as integral for its preservation. “Ypeij and Dermout point out that in those days a denial of the covenant of works was regarded as a heresy,” Berkhof observes.[23] Herman Witsius’s widely influential Economy of the Covenants (1677) reflects the consensus in organizing scripture according to its own internal covenantal principle by recognizing the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. A confusion at this point would mean a confusion of law and gospel—the very confusion that Paul lamented in Romans 10 concerning his fellow-Jews and criticized with such vehemence in his letter to the Galatians.

This law-gospel or covenant of works-covenant of grace structure is far from idiosyncratic. Rather, it represents the organic development of Reformed, covenant theology. This pattern of rendering “law-gospel” and “covenant of works-covenant of grace” interchangeable is hardly some Lutheran-Calvinist hybrid imposed recently on Reformed theology.[24] If one were to pick up a typical manual of doctrine from any writer in our tradition before World War II, this scheme would have been elucidated.

Although the federal theologians had been consigned to the dustbins of historical theology by neo-Protestantism, Karl Barth, mostly for other reasons than theirs, inherited the suspicions of his mentors. Citing the classic distinction between a covenant of works and a covenant of grace as the first “fatal historical moment” in Reformed theology, Barth and his students insisted upon a single covenant of grace.[25] Those who suspect the classic Calvinists of setting systematic theology (ordo salutis) above or even against biblical theology (historia salutis) might also be interested in Barth’s second “fateful moment” in Reformed orthodoxy: “… the introduction of an understanding of revelation as a sequence of stages.”[26] Regarded by many, including Moltmann and Pannenberg, as the virtual founder of the sub-discipline of biblical theology, Johannes Cocceius (1603–69) stoutly defended the distinction between the principles of law and promise, covenant of works and covenant of grace.[27]

A number of recent Reformed scholars have challenged the classic formulation quite apart from the arguments adduced by this school, and therefore it is incorrect to regard these as “Barthian” interpretations.[28] Furthermore, as the case of John Murray amply demonstrates, it is entirely possible to question the propriety of referring to the Adamic administration as a “covenant of works” without denying the importance of the distinction between law and gospel.[29] Nevertheless, Barth marks awatershed in sustained criticism of classic Reformed (covenant) theology, and the rhetorical effectiveness of contemporary Barthians on this point has undoubtedly made inroads in more orthodox Reformed and Presbyterian circles.[30]

To be sure, as noted above, there was more subtlety in the Reformed (covenantal) approach than was typical of Lutheran presentations, and those differences ought not to be minimized. Nevertheless, one discerns the same affirmation, for example, of the third use of the law in the Lutheran Book of Concord and in Melanchthon’s Loci communes. The latter volume has been especially formative in the thought not only of Lutherans but of Reformed divines from Heinrich Bullinger to Thomas Goodwin. In fact, Calvin himself translated this textbook into French. As Otto Weber points out, in Heidelberg, Herborn, Marburg and Bremen—all places where the Reformed movement was strongly influenced by Melanchthon—the concept of the covenant came to dominate dogmatics, even subordinating predestination to it. “The whole emphasis,” he writes, “is shifted from the Absolute to salvation-history and anthropology,” a tendency that can be seen particularly in Bullinger, Ursinus, Alsted, Pareus, and others.[31]

Here, the categories of law and promise meet their redemptive-historical corollary in the covenants of works and grace—structures basic to a biblical-theological, covenantal tradition that has grown organically out of the soil of the Lutheran Reformation. By making “covenant” rather than “justification” the paradigm for “law” and “gospel,” Reformed orthodoxy was better prepared to account for a wider range of biblical data. This preserves the essential character of the covenant of grace as what, in the light of recent studies, can be called a “royal grant” from the Great King. At the same time, this tradition could also emphasize mutual obligation without surrendering to either neonomianism or antinomianism.[32] Law had its positive service to perform in the covenant of grace, and yet that service was to always be distinguished from that of the gospel.

III. Conclusions

Neither side in the current debate within conservative Reformed circles today believes that the tradition is normative. However, both sides do in fact appeal to the tradition in support of a “truly Reformed” articulation of the covenant. It is incumbent upon all participants in this discussion to eschew caricature and simplistic choices in favor of careful analysis of the tradition under review. If revisions need to be made, so be it, but let them be informed. A theological perspective that aims at being “covenantal” in contrast to being something else (in this case, “law-gospel”) should at least recognize what “covenantal” means to those for whom on this point the Westminster Standards and Three Forms of Unity remain essentially definitive. A revisionary perspective of a covenant theology antithetical to the law-gospel distinction may turn out to be more biblical, in which case we would have to dissent from our tradition. Nevertheless, we hope to have shown that it is inaccurate to identify this perspective as “Reformed” in any sense that is identifiable with the tradition that goes by that name. As far as the law-gospel distinction is concerned, it is as integral to Reformed theology (embedded in federalism) as it is to Lutheranism.

Regardless of where one comes down on the matter, the architects of Reformed theology were not aware of any choice between covenant theology on one hand and law-gospel hermeneutics on the other; between biblical and systematic theology; between careful exegesis and the logical correlation of biblical themes. Nor did they recognize any false dilemma between neonomian confusion of law and gospel on one hand and antinomian displacement of law on the other. While they were, like their magisterial forebears, well acquainted with the tendency to set a certain reading of James against an evangelical reading of Paul, their covenant theology provided a rich hermeneutical guide that enabled them to provide an account of justification and sanctification within the proper context of union with Christ as the federal head of his elect in a covenant of grace founded on the fulfillment of the covenant of works by the second Adam.

Although this brief summary has not been able to explore the exegesis of the Reformed forerunners mentioned, it would be unwise to infer that exegesis was lacking or that elaborate systematic categories were imposed on the passages to yield the prejudged results. One cannot read their systems, commentaries, or even sermons—all of which are steeped in the original biblical languages, conversant with the writings of the church fathers, and characterized by an astute awareness of subtle textual problems and careful theological argument— without appreciating the rigor of their exegesis, especially when compared to many contemporary attempts on both sides of this debate. It is that considerable, consensual and cumulative exegetical labor that must be refuted by contemporary critics of the tradition.

Notes

1. Due to the popular nature of this debate, I will be appealing throughout this article to translations of primary sources, which are readily available and accessible to English readers.
2. Zacharius Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism (2d American ed.; Columbus, Ohio: n.p., 1852; repr., Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, n.d.), 1.
3. Ibid., 2-3.
4. See Michael S. Horton, “Calvin and the Law-Gospel Hermeneutic,” Pro Ecclesia 6 (1997): 27-42.
5. Theodore Beza, The Christian Faith, by Theodore Beza (trans. James Clark; Lewes: Focus Christian Ministries, 1992), 41ff.
6. Wilhelm Niesel, Reformed Symbolics: A Comparison of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism (trans. David Lewis; Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962), 217.
7. Cited by HeinrichHeppe, Reformed Dogmatics (ed. Ernst Bizer; trans. G. T. Thomson; London: Allen & Unwin, 1950), 290.
8. Ibid., 289-90.
9. Ibid., 290.
10. Caspar Olevianus, De subst. foed. grat., 169; cited by Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, 294.
11. Ibid., 295.
12. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 112: “The Law and the Gospel in the Word of God. The Churches of the Reformation from the very beginning distinguished between the law and the gospel as the two parts of the Word of God as a means of grace. This distinction was not understood to be identical with that between the Old and the New Testament, but was regarded as a distinction that applies to both Testaments. There is law and gospel in the Old Testament and there is law and gospel in the New. The law comprises everything in Scripture which is a revelation of God’s will in the form of command or prohibition, while the gospel embraces everything, whether it be in the Old Testament or the New, that pertains to the work of reconciliation and that proclaims the seeking and redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ. And each one of these two parts has its own proper function in the economy of grace.”
13. J. Van Brugen, Annotations on the Heidelberg Catechism (Neerlandia, Alberta: Inheritance Publications, 1998), 170.
14. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; 2 vols.; LCC; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.11.14–15.
15. Calvin, Institutes, 3.17.3.
16. Robert Rollock, A Treatise of Our Effectual Calling and of Certain Common-Places of Theology Contained Under It, in vol. 1 of Select Works of Robert Rollock (ed. William M. Gunn; Edinburgh: The Woodrow Society, 1849), esp. ch. 2.
17. William Perkins, The Art of Prophesying (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1996), 54.
18. Ibid., 55.
19. Ibid., 60.
20. See WCF 7.1-3: “[1] The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him, as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant. [2] The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience. [3] Man, by his Fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace: wherein he freely offered unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto life, his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe.”
21. Petrus Dathenus, The Pearl of Christian Comfort (trans. A. Blok; Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Press, 1986).
22. See David C. Lachman, The Marrow Controversy (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1988); and Philip Graham Ryken, Thomas Boston as Preacher of the Fourfold State (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1999).
23. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 212.
24. In fact, citations of Augustine are replete on this point among the Reformed scholastics, such as the following remark from The City of God: “The first covenant was this, unto Adam: ’Whensoever thou eatest thereof thou shalt die the death,’ “ and this is why all his children “are breakers of God’s covenant made with Adam in paradise” (City of God 16.28).
25. Karl Barth, cited by Daniel L. Migliore in his introduction to The Göttingen Dogmatics, by Karl Barth (ed. Hannelotte Reiffen; trans. G. W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 1:xxxviii.
26. Ibid.
27. Johannes Cocceius, Summ. Theol., 22.1.
28. For instance, John Murray’s widely noted reticence to accept the pre-Adamic covenant of works is, at least on my reading, semantic rather than substantive. See his “The Adamic Administration,” in The Collected Works of John Murray (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977), 2:47–59.
29. John Murray writes, “In the degree to which error is entertained at this point, in the same degree is our conception of the gospel perverted…. What was the question that aroused the apostle to such passionate zeal and holy indignation, indignation that has its kinship with the imprecatory utterances of the Old Testament? In a word it was the relation of law and gospel” (Principles of Conduct [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957], 181).
30. The influential literature on this subject is vast. Among others see Brian G. Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); R. T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Holmes Rolston III, “Responsible Man in Reformed Theology: Calvin vs. TheWestminster Confession,” SJT 23 (1970): 129-56; Alan Clifford, The Atonement and Justification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); J. B. Torrance, “Contract or Covenant,” SJT 23 (1970): 51-76; idem, “The Concept of Federal Theology—Was Calvin a Federal Theologian,” in Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor (ed. Wilhelm H. Neuser; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 15–40; Basil Hall, “Calvin Against the Calvinists,” in John Calvin (ed. G. E. Duffield; Courtenay Studies in Reformation Theology 1; Appleford: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1966), 19–37; Charles Bell, Calvin and Scottish Theology: The Doctrine of Assurance (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1985). On the other side, see Paul Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982); Joel Beeke, The Assurance of Faith: Calvin, English Puritanism and the Dutch Second Reformation (London: Peter Lang, 1991); Lyle Bierma, “Federal Theology in the Sixteenth Century: Two Traditions?” WTJ 45 (1983): 304-21; Richard A. Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins (Durham: Labyrinth, 1986); idem, “The Covenant of Works and the Stability of Divine Law in Seventeenth-Century Reformed Orthodoxy,” CTJ 29 (1994): 75-101.
31. Otto Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics (trans. Darrell L. Guder; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 1:125.
32. For a cogent study of this delicate balance in historical practice, see John von Rohr, The Covenant of Grace in Puritan Thought (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1986).