The Upper Register

Merit and Moses: Spiritual Schizophrenia? Part 1

The overarching point of Part 3 of MM is that Klinean republication generates dangerous instability in a number of theological areas. Such instability is caused by the fact that the republication doctrine sees both works and grace (albeit at different layers) in a single covenant, the Mosaic covenant. One of the key areas of instability that the authors of MM detect is the potential for “spiritual schizophrenia” in the piety of OT and NT believers. The authors of MM write:

The basic problem centers on how the same obedience of an Israelite in the Republication Paradigm could function on one level to merit a reward (apart from grace) and at the same time on another level be rewarded by grace alone. This dual role of works leads to a dualism in God’s people—a kind of spiritual “schizophrenia” in the everyday life of the believer. By this term, we are describing the divided mindset and contradictory approach to life that would result from living according to these opposing views of obedience simultaneously—one of grace and one of works (MM 126).

They go on to spell out the nature of this supposed spiritual schizophrenia in terms of two contrasting  spiritual mindsets. On the one hand, when viewing God’s acceptance of their good works in the context of the covenant of grace at the lower layer, they would have had a “sense of unworthiness.” On the other hand, when viewing God’s rewarding of their good works with temporal blessings in the context of the covenant of works at the upper layer, they would have had a “sense of entitlement,” viewing God’s rewards for their good works as something they merited, rather than as his gracious acceptance of their flawed works. The authors ask, “Would this not have resulted in a life of personal and spiritual confusion and instability?” (MM 126).

My response to the “spiritual confusion” and “schizophrenia” charge is going to be two-fold. I’ll begin, first, by arguing that there would have been no schizophrenia since the entire arrangement was a gift of grace. Second, I’m going to drill down and examine the piety of OT believers – first, looking at those leaders appointed by God to function as types of Christ (e.g., Abraham and David); second, looking at the piety of the Israelite who was not appointed to be a type of Christ but was an ordinary member of the covenant community. The piety of these two sub-groups of Israelites, in terms of how they related to God under the Law, is similar but not identical.

First, I want to begin by pointing out that God made it very clear to the Israelites that the very arrangement in which they as a nation were appointed to function as a typal kingdom governed by the works principle was a gift of grace, granted them for no merit of their own. As Kline affirmed so clearly, Israel’s “election to receive the typological kingdom in the first place was emphatically not based on any merit of theirs (cf. Deut 9:5,6)” (KP 323).

Even if God did reward their imperfect and fluctuating obedience to the Mosaic law with temporal blessings in the land, they had no reason to boast in themselves or in their own righteousness. God brought Israel into the land not because of their righteousness but in fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise. As they are standing on the brink of entering the land, Moses exhorts them:

“Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people” (Deut 9:4-6 ESV).

Moses goes on to rehearse the sad history proving that they were a “stubborn people.” He reminds the people that they rebelled against God in the wilderness from the very outset, immediately after being brought up out of their bondage in Egypt. Therefore, the fact that they are still God’s chosen people and that he is still intent on bringing them into the land under Joshua, is proof that their ordination to be “a holy nation,” a typal kingdom, is not on the basis of their merit but on the basis of God’s free, electing grace in fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise.

Throughout Israel’s long history from the conquest of Canaan under Joshua right on down to the exile, they repeatedly rebelled and disobeyed God, and yet he continued to sustain them in his grace on the basis of the prior Abrahamic promise. Thus, any limited temporal blessings that God did bestow on them as a reward for what little obedience they did have, was not a reward in which they could rightly indulge in a “sense of entitlement” before God. Because of the continued sinfulness of the nation, both corporately and individually, they knew they needed God’s grace at every point to sustain their obedience and their continued retention of the land and the temporal blessings of life in the land. 

KP = Kingdom Prologue (2006)

Merit and Moses: A "Pure" Covenant of Grace?

We are still examining the allegation of MM concerning the instability that arises from seeing both works and grace in the Mosaic covenant. Not only does seeing a works principle in the context of the post-Fall Mosaic covenant cause a dangerous theological instability, the authors argue, but such an interpretation of the Mosaic covenant is “a clear departure from the confessional conception of the Mosaic covenant as a pure covenant of grace in its substance” (MM 100, emphasis added). On this reading, the WCF explicitly rules out of bounds anyone who does not agree with them that the Mosaic covenant is a “pure” covenant of grace. This is precisely what they claim:

The Standards are consistent in maintaining the gracious character and nature of the covenant of grace in every epoch, which, by definition, excludes any element of meritorious obedience (MM 99).

But by this standard, a good number of Reformed theologians, widely recognized as orthodox, would be excluded—not just Kline. I hope to demonstrate that point by means of a few quotes from representative Reformed theologians below. I am not claiming that all of these Reformed theologians held to Kline’s precise formulations. Kline himself would not agree with every nuance or way of putting things. He would likely want to word things differently or introduce additional biblical-theological frameworks (especially his two-layer metaphor and his own concept of typology). I’m not claiming these theologians were Klineans before Kline. In fact, these theologians do not even agree with each other in every particular. However, they do think that the works principle originally seen in the pre-Fall covenant of works is in some way republished in the Mosaic economy. Therefore, MM’s narrow interpretation of the Westminster Confession cannot be correct if it would exclude and cast out these men from the circle of Reformed orthodoxy.

Amandus Polanus would be cast out, since he thought the Mosaic covenant was a repetition of the Adamic covenant of works:

The covenant of works is that in which God promiseth everlasting life unto a man that in all respects performeth perfect obedience to the law of works, adding thereunto threatenings of eternal death, if he shall not perform perfect obedience thereto. God made this covenant in the beginning with the first man Adam, whilst he was in the first estate of integrity: the same covenant God did repeat and make again by Moses with the people of Israel (quoted in The Marrow of Modern Divinity, 59).

Samuel Bolton would be cast out, since he thought the Mosaic covenant was neither a covenant of grace nor a covenant of works but a subservient covenant:

If it be neither a covenant of works, nor a covenant of grace, then must it of necessity be a third kind of covenant: and it must needs be such a covenant as does not stand in opposition to grace, nor is inconsistent with the covenant of grace .... Hence it is called a subservient covenant. It was given by way of subserviency to the Gospel and a fuller revelation of the covenant of grace (The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, Puritan Paperbacks, 99).

Thomas Boston would be cast out, since he thought both the covenant of grace and the covenant of works were delivered on Mount Sinai:

Wherefore I conceive the two covenants to have been both delivered on Mount Sinai to the Israelites. First, the covenant of grace made with Abraham, contained in the preface, repeated and promulgated there unto Israel, to be believed and embraced by faith, that they might be saved; to which were annexed the ten commandments, given by the Mediator Christ, the head of the covenant, as a rule of life to his covenant people.

Secondly, the covenant of works made with Adam, contained in the same ten commands, delivered with thunderings and lightnings, the meaning of which was afterwards cleared by Moses, describing the righteousness of the law and the sanctions thereof, repeated and promulgated to the Israelites there, as the original perfect rule of righteousness, to be obeyed (Boston’s notes to The Marrow of Modern Divinity, 56).

Francis Turretin would be cast out, since he didn’t believe the Mosaic covenant was a “pure” covenant of grace. He thought it was a covenant of grace, to be sure, albeit one administered under a rigid legal economy that included a new promulgation of the covenant of works:

It pleased God to administer the covenant of grace in this period under a rigid legal economy .... A twofold relation ought always to obtain: the one legal, more severe, through which by a new promulgation of the law and of the covenant of works ... he wished to set forth what men owed and what was to be expected by them on account of duty unperformed. In this respect, the law is called the letter that kills (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, P&R edition, 2.227).

Herman Witsius would be cast out, since he didn’t believe the Mosaic covenant was either a covenant of grace or a covenant of works, but a national covenant of sincere piety that supposed both:

What was it then? It was a national covenant between God and Israel, whereby Israel promised to God a sincere obedience to all his precepts, especially to the ten words; God, on the other hand, promised to Israel, that such an observance would be acceptable to him, nor want its reward, both in this life, and in that which is to come, both as to soul and body. This reciprocal promise supposed a covenant of grace .... It also supposed the doctrine of the covenant of works, the terror or which being increased by those tremendous signs that attended it, they ought to have been excited to embrace that covenant of God. This agreement therefore is a consequent both of the covenant of grace and of works; but was formally neither the one nor the other .... If any should ask me, of what kind, whether of works or of grace? I shall answer, it is formally neither: but a covenant of sincere piety, which supposes both (Economy of the Covenants, P&R edition, 2.186).

I could go on with many more quotes from orthodox Reformed theologians who thought the works principle of the Adamic covenant was repeated in some way in the Mosaic economy, but these are sufficient to make my point. These theologians did not all agree on the precise way in which they saw the works principle in the Mosaic economy, but they surely did see it there somehow. This contradicts the claim of the authors of MM that their view of the Mosaic covenant is the only permissible view. They claim that “the blessings and the curses of the law in the Mosaic covenant do not function in any way as a covenant of works” (MM 95, emphasis added). But many sound, orthodox, mainstream Reformed theologians thought the blessings and curses of the Mosaic covenant did function in some way as a covenant of works. The above quotes prove that they did not agree with the position of MM that the covenant of works can only exist pre-Fall and can never be seen as republished in any way in the post-Fall Mosaic economy.

It is ironic that the extreme position advocated by MM banishes even their beloved Turretin along with Kline from the circle of orthodoxy. For even Turretin, who viewed the Sinai law covenant as, in itself, an administration of the covenant of grace (which is not something Kline would be able to say), recognized that “it pleased God to administer the covenant of grace in this period under a rigid legal economy” that included within it “a new promulgation of the law and of the covenant of works.”

Merit and Moses: An Unstable Paradigm? Part 2

An additional reason there is no mixing or confusion of law and gospel in Kline’s republication paradigm is because of his clear distinction between the underlying layer (the covenant of grace, by which the elect obtain the eternal inheritance) and the upper typological layer (the typological covenant of works governing Israel’s retention of the earthly, typological inheritance). The authors of MM simply gloss over the massive structural distinction between the type and the antitype, between long life in the land of Canaan and eternal life in heaven. If Kline did not make that distinction between the two layers, then he would indeed be guilty of mixing law and grace in the same covenant as the authors of MM charge. But because Kline clearly distinguishes the two layers, and sees them as governed by antithetical principles of inheritance (works governing Israel’s retention of the typological inheritance, grace governing the elect’s obtaining of the eternal inheritance) there is no mixing or confusion of works and grace in the Klinean paradigm:

Paul, perceiving the works principle in the Mosaic law economy, was able to insist that this did not entail an abrogation of the promises of grace given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob centuries earlier (Gal 3:17), precisely because the works principle applied only to the typological kingdom in Canaan and not to the inheritance of the eternal kingdom-city promised to Abraham as a gift of grace and at last to be received by Abraham and all his seed, Jew and Gentile, through faith in Christ Jesus (KP 237).

Samuel Bolton (an invited commissioner to the Westminster Assembly) made a similar distinction:

[The subservient covenant made with Israel at Sinai] was temporary, and had respect to Canaan and God’s blessing there, if and as Israel obeyed. It had no relation to heaven, for that was promised by another covenant which God made before He entered upon the subservient covenant ... though under these temporal blessings spiritual blessings were shadowed and apprehended by those who were spiritual (The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, Puritan Paperbacks, 99, 113-14).

So the concern of the authors of MM that, on the Klinean paradigm, “grace and works have been combined as opposing principles in a single covenant in a ‘tug of war’ kind of tension with one another” is shown to be unfounded. There is no “instability” or “tug of war” or “confusion” between grace and works, since they apply to different layers (the typological layer vs. the underlying soteriological reality) and since the one was added by way of subserviency to the other—as Paul himself so clearly taught in Galatians.

On the surface the authors of MM appear to be fighting against Kline, charging his republication paradigm with instability. But in reality they are fighting against Paul himself. Does Kline reintroduce the covenant of works in some form after the Fall? So does Paul. “The law came in to increase the trespass” (Rom 5:20). Does Kline think there is some way in which the antithetical principles of works and grace can coexist without annulling the promise? So does Paul. “The law ... does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void” (Gal 3:17). Does Kline see two layers—an underlying layer of grace that continues on into its fulfillment in Christ, and a temporary superadded layer governed by law? So does Paul. “The law was added ... until the Seed should come” (Gal 3:19). If Kline’s thought is plagued by dangerous “instability,” then so is Paul’s.

Merit and Moses: An Unstable Paradigm? Part 1

In Part 3 (Chapters 9–12), the authors of MM charge Klinean republication with being “an unstable theological paradigm” (MM 82). They analyze its alleged instability by examining how it affects four theological topics:  the covenant of works (Ch. 9), the covenant of grace (Ch. 10), the merit of Christ (Ch. 11), and the doctrine of good works (Ch. 12). Initially, I considered responding to each chapter separately, but the more I reflected on their arguments in Part 3, it occurred to me that one theme ran through most of these chapters. That main theme is captured by their charge that Klinean republication is “an unstable theological paradigm” because of Kline’s two-layer cake metaphor, with the covenant of grace at the underlying level and then a superadded typological layer governed by the works principle. Here are some quotes illustrating this fundamental concern:

It is impossible for God to renew a covenant of works with fallen man .... This combination of substantially differing elements in the construction of the two levels of the Mosaic covenant necessarily leads to the creation of two competing “natures” within a single covenant .... The Abrahamic covenant “is characterized by faith” but the Mosaic covenant “is characterized by works of the law” .... Thus, in the Republication Paradigm, the “dual nature” of the Mosaic covenant has led to the creation of an incoherent, unstable system. Grace and works have been combined as opposing principles in a single covenant in a “tug of war” kind of tension with one another .... The presence of a works-merit principle for receiving God’s favor cannot coexist (by definition) in a covenant that is based on the necessity of God’s grace for fallen sinners (MM 87, 100, 101, 103).

The authors of MM are concerned about what they perceive to be the “instability” and “incoherence” of the Klinean republication doctrine, caused especially by its two-layer metaphor. As they see it, it is not enough to keep the covenant of works and the covenant of grace distinct spatially. They must be kept distinct temporally. On their view, the covenant of works must be an exclusively pre-Fall covenant, and from the Fall onward, there can be nothing but a pure covenant of grace governing God’s relationships with fallen man. Klinean republication confuses this clear temporal bifurcation (pre-Fall vs. post-Fall) by seeing the covenant of works republished after the Fall in the Mosaic economy at the top layer. Doing so creates a “tug of war” between these two opposed principles of works and grace. Hence, the instability of the republication paradigm. This alleged instability caused by mixing a covenant of grace and a covenant of works after the Fall seems to be one of their primary concerns.

But there are problems with this charge. To begin, by insisting that the works principle must be sealed off temporally so that it exists only in the pre-Fall situation, they will need to take up their argument with Paul himself, who saw the works principle as something God reintroduced after the Fall. “The law, which came 430 years afterward [that is, after the Abrahamic covenant] ... was added because of transgressions” (Gal 3:17, 19). Many commentators agree that “because of transgressions” means “to turn existing sin into transgression” (e.g., Douglas Moo, Galatians, BECNT [Baker, 2013], 234).

This is reinforced by Paul’s teaching in Romans. “The law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression” (Rom 4:15).  In the next chapter this is explained further. Although Rom 5:12-21 is primarily about the comparison and contrast between the two Adams, the secondary issue of the Mosaic law also comes into view. Paul says, “Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam” (Rom 5:14). In saying this, Paul implies that the sinning of the Israelites from the time of Moses onward was like the transgression of Adam (cp. Hosea 6:7). With the advent of the Mosaic law, they began sinning again in an Adam-like way, that is, under a law covenant. They weren’t merely sinning but were transgressing a works-based covenant. To make this clear, Paul later on says that “The law came in [after Adam’s Fall] to increase the trespass [of Adam]” (Rom 5:20). With the introduction of the Mosaic law, Adam’s one trespass was multiplied in corporate Israel on the grand scale of human history, so that Israel’s Fall becomes a reenactment and expansion of Adam’s original transgression. “The law came in to increase the trespass.”

The authors of MM cannot be right in their claim that the works principle can only exist in a hermetically sealed pre-Fall container, since it appears to be a significant part of Paul’s analysis of the shape of covenantal redemptive history to recognize God’s wisdom in fashioning it the way he did:  first, giving the promise of the Messiah to come, then giving the law (post-Fall) precisely in order to shut up everyone under sin. All of this was perfectly harmonious in God’s wisdom, to advance his purpose of grace. He added the law post-Fall, not to sow confusion, but that we might see even more clearly the need for Christ to be “born under the law” (Gal 4:4), bear its curse in our place (Gal 3:13), and perfectly fulfill its positive requirement so that there may be righteousness for all who believe (Rom 10:4).

Although at first it may seem that the Mosaic republication of the covenant of works is at cross-purposes with grace, the reintroduction of the covenant of works after the Fall had a gracious end in view. Paul himself recognized that the addition of the law after the Abrahamic covenant might give the impression that the introduction of the works principle would somehow be in tension with or opposed to the Abrahamic covenant. Because he recognized the law and the promise as opposed principles of inheritance, one by faith, the other by works (Gal 3:18), he was prompted to raise the question: “Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not!” (Gal 3:21). This rhetorical question paved the way for Paul to explain how the Mosaic covenant with its works principle does not work contrary to but actually promotes the Abrahamic covenant of promise. How so? Because the law was a temporary pedagogue given to imprison Israel under sin so that they might not trust in their own works but in the Messiah to come (Gal 3:22-24). The Mosaic covenant was subservient to the Abrahamic promise.

Thomas Boston made the same point, using the same Galatians passage to make it:

Wherefore I conceive the two covenants [of grace and of works] to have been both delivered on Mount Sinai to the Israelites .... Thus there is no confounding of the two covenants of grace and works; but the latter was added to the former as subservient to it, to turn their eyes toward the promise, or the covenant of grace ... for, says the apostle, “It was added till the seed should come” (Boston’s notes to The Marrow of Modern Divinity, 56).

Any initial worry that the Mosaic covenant of works stands in tension with or is at cross-purposes with the prior Abrahamic promise is unfounded, for the law was added not as a stand-alone entity as a means of salvation but as a subservient covenant, precisely in order to prepare the way for the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise.

Merit and Moses: Response to the Pendulum Analogy, Part 2

The authors of MM ignore the fact that the original pendulum swing happened long before the Shepherd controversy, when John Murray reacted against dispensationalism and argued in 1953 that historic Reformed covenant theology “needs recasting”:

It appears to me that the covenant theology, notwithstanding the finesse of analysis with which it was worked out and the grandeur of its articulated systematization, needs recasting (The Covenant of Grace, 5).

But what was Murray referring to when he said that covenant theology “needs recasting”? The authors of MM claim the recasting was restricted to the narrow point of seeing covenant not as a “mutual pact” but as something God sovereignly initiates and administers (MM 15). This was certainly part of the recasting, but there was more to Murray’s agenda than that. It had to do with the very definition of “covenant.” After surveying the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the New covenants, Murray concludes as follows:

In all this we have the covenant as a sovereign administration of grace and promise, constituting the relation of communion with God, coming to its richest and fullest expression .... From the beginning of God’s disclosures to men in terms of covenant we find a unity of conception which is to the effect that a divine covenant is a sovereign administration of grace and of promise (The Covenant of Grace, 29, 31).

One of the prime implications of this definition is that even the Mosaic covenant must viewed as “a sovereign administration of grace and promise.” But it may be objected, “How does the conditionality of the Mosaic covenant, with its blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience, comport with the notion that it is a sovereign administration of grace?”

The answer must follow the lines which have been delineated above in connection with the keeping of the Abrahamic covenant. What needs to be emphasized now is that the Mosaic covenant in respect of the condition of obedience is not in a different category from the Abrahamic .... There is nothing that is principially different in the necessity of keeping the covenant and of obedience to God’s voice, which proceeds from the Mosaic covenant, from that which is involved in the keeping required in the Abrahamic (The Covenant of Grace, 22).

Murray recognized that by “recasting” of covenant theology in this way, he was distancing himself from a view of the Mosaic covenant that was widely held by mainstream covenant theologians before him:

The view that in the Mosaic covenant there was a repetition of the so-called covenant of works, current among covenant theologians, is a grave misconception and involved an erroneous construction of the Mosaic covenant, as well as fails to assess the uniqueness of the Adamic administration. The Mosaic covenant was distinctly redemptive in character and was continuous with and extensive of the Abrahamic covenants (“The Adamic Administration,” Collected Writings of John Murray, 2.50).

By defining covenant as “a sovereign administration of grace and promise,” a definition that applies to every covenant, Murray made it impossible to affirm either that the pre-Fall covenant was a covenant of works, or that the Mosaic covenant involved in some way a repetition of the covenant of works. He thereby made structural changes to covenant theology that impinged upon the Pauline law-gospel contrast and the heart of the gospel. Kline’s 1964 article, “Law Covenant,” is a response to Murray’s recasting of covenant theology in which he reduced the covenant concept to guaranteed promise. In that article, Kline wrote:

Historical exegesis, therefore, contradicts any claim that might be made for the exclusive propriety of the use of “covenant” for divine dispensations of guaranteed promise. The evidence from all sides converges to demonstrate that the systematic theologian possesses ample warrant to speak of both promise covenant and, in sharp distinction from that, of law covenant .... Rejection of the equation of covenant with the election-guaranteed promise principle is necessary to avoid the conceptual fragmentation of the theology of the covenant (“Law Covenant,” pp. 8, 17).

Why is it so important to Kline to have a definition of covenant that is broad enough to include both types of covenants? It is because he sees that if covenant is reduced to promise covenant, then there is no room for law covenant (i.e., covenants of the works variety – whether pre-Fall or Mosaic), and if there is no room for law covenant, then the obedience of Christ (and therefore the gospel) is negated. Kline says:

It is by the obedience of the one that the many are made righteous unto eternal life. Though the many inherit the blessings not by law (in the Gal. 3:18 sense) but by promise, they are not heirs at all except they are heirs in and through Christ, joint-heirs with Christ. For the promises of the covenant are yea and amen only in Christ. And therefore the promises are made secure to the many according to the principle of inheritance by law after all .... If it is the obedience of the one that is the ground of the promise-guarantee given to the many, then clearly the principle of law is more fundamental than that of promise .... The blessings of redemption are secured by the works of a federal head who must satisfy the law’s demands (“Law Covenant,” pp. 12-13).

Murray himself did not deny the active obedience of Christ, or confuse faith and works as the instrument of justification, but his successor Shepherd did. And Kline saw all this as the bitter fruit of Murray’s recasting of covenant theology (in reaction to dispensationalism) in a way that reduced all covenants to covenants of grace and left no room for covenants of the works variety as the foundation for the obedience of Christ. Shepherd’s pendulum swing away from the plumb line was initiated by Murray, who did not want to speak of covenants of the works variety, whether pre-Fall or Mosaic. Kline returned the pendulum back to the plumb line by bringing back the notion of republication into the contemporary discussion of Reformed covenant theology, an understanding that even Murray recognized was “current among covenant theologians” prior to his recasting.

Merit and Moses: Response to the Pendulum Analogy, Part 1

I’ve dealt with the core argument of MM. Now I want to respond to some of the lesser claims of the book. I begin with their pendulum analogy.

In Part 1, they offer their reading of recent history related to the controversy over justification at Westminster Theological Seminary that took place from 1975 to 1983. They allege that Kline developed his view of the Mosaic covenant in reaction to Norman Shepherd (MM 28-33). They use the metaphor of reactionary “pendulum swings” throughout the book, arguing that the center or plumb line is given by the Confession, and both Shepherd and Kline represent extreme deviations from the plumb line. First came Shepherd, who deviated from the plumb line by denying the covenant of works, even before the Fall. Then, along came Kline, who reacted against Shepherd’s errors by going in the opposite extreme of seeing not only the covenant of works before the Fall but also seeing it as republished after the Fall in the Mosaic economy.

But is this how things unfolded? It is true that the Shepherd controversy prompted Kline to sharpen some of his formulations of covenant theology, but it is not accurate to say that he developed the republication doctrine in response to Shepherd. In the 1960s, long before the Shepherd controversy, Kline had already identified what he perceived to be an error in Murray’s definition of covenant as a sovereign administration of grace and argued rather that covenant is a generic concept that includes both promise covenant and law covenant, of which the Mosaic was one.

Kline’s book, By Oath Consigned (BOC), was published in 1968, at least seven years before the first sparks of the Shepherd controversy in 1975. In that book, he wrote:

The Sinaitic administration ... Paul interpreted as in itself a dispensation of the kingdom inheritance opposite in principle to inheritance by guaranteed promise .... The Sinaitic Covenant in itself, as a covenant ratified by Israel’s oath, made law obedience by the Israelites themselves the way of life-inheritance (BOC 22, 32).

In fact, the basis of this section of BOC was an earlier article titled “Law Covenant” that was published in the Westminster Theological Journal in 1964. That was 11 years before the Shepherd’s controversial teaching on justification by faith and works, or by obedient faith, had broken out.

Merit and Moses: Response to the Core Argument, Part 2

What about the second step of their core argument? They claim Kline’s voluntaristic definition of merit undergirds and makes possible his doctrine that the Mosaic covenant is a republication of the covenant of works:

This redefinition [of merit] was first applied to the notion of Adamic merit in the original covenant of works. In the development of Kline’s teaching, it also came to undergird and shape Israel’s “typological merit” in the republication of the covenant of works under Moses …. The traditional view required that a work be perfect in order to merit before God. In the redefined view underlying the republication position, perfection is no longer absolutely necessary …. This redefinition of merit … is central and foundational to the doctrine of republication (MM 41, 48, 59).

But it is simply not the case that Kline’s definition of merit “came to undergird” his republication doctrine. They provide no quotes where he explicitly moves from point A to point B, that is, from his view of merit (which arose in the context of debate whether Adam could have merited under the covenant of works) to his view that the Mosaic covenant was, at the typological layer, a republication of the covenant of the works. And they would not be able to find any quotes to that effect, since, as we have seen, Kline did not hold a voluntaristic definition of merit in which God is at liberty, by his mere will, untethered from his justice, to define imperfect deeds performed by sinners as meritorious.

The authors of MM further claim that Kline, based on his voluntaristic definition of merit, taught that sinners can “extract” a blessing from God (p. 39), that God “makes himself indebted” to sinful man (MM 77). They argue that, for Kline, the category of merit applies “equally” to Christ, Adam, Israel (MM 68, 112); these figures are “interchangeable” (MM 117). “The fact that Israel’s works are those of fallen sinful creatures is completely irrelevant” (MM 69).

All these outlandish charges flow from their faulty starting point, but bear no relationship to reality. Kline never said or implied that sinners can “extract” a blessing from God. Kline never said or implied that the category of merit applies “equally” to Christ, Adam, and Israel. Kline certainly never said or implied that the sinfulness of Israel is “completely irrelevant.” Again, they are not able to bring forward any quotes supporting these allegations—in this case, not even a lonely snippet of a quote.

Now, it is true that Kline occasionally spoke of a kind of “meritorious” obedience in the post-Fall situation, as either something that occurred (e.g., in the case of the exemplary obedience of Noah, Abraham, and David), or as something God required (e.g., in the case of Israel under the republished works principle in the Mosaic covenant). But Kline recognized that any “merit” on the part of sinners in the post-Fall situation is in a special category by itself—it is emphatically typological merit. After the Fall, the imperfect obedience of certain OT saints (sinners saved by grace incapable of truly meriting anything) could function typologically only if God “constituted” those individuals as typological signs of the coming Messiah and “invested” their flawed obedience with typological significance. Kline writes:

The biblical data indicate that the Lord was pleased to take the exemplary obedience of certain of his servants and to constitute that a typological sign of how the obedience of the coming messianic Servant of the Lord would secure the kingdom and its royal-priestly blessings for himself and for his people. Abraham and David were recipients of such covenants of grant as rewards for faithfulness. Phinehas was another (cf. Num 25:11–13). Each of these individuals had personal hope of heaven only through God’s grace in Jesus Christ, only as a gift received by faith alone. But the conspicuous faithfulness of their lives in general or of certain specific acts of outstanding service they performed was invested by the Lord with typological significance so that they, with reference to a typological manifestation of the kingdom, pointed to Christ as one who also was under a covenant of works and received the grant of the kingdom for the obedient fulfillment of his covenantal mission (KP 237-38, emphasis added).

Here is another quote by Kline making the same point:

Within this typological structure Abraham emerges as an appointed sign of his promised messianic seed, the Servant of the Lord, whose fulfillment of his covenantal mission was the meritorious ground of the inheritance of the antitypical, eschatological kingdom by the true, elect Israel of all nations. Certainly, Abraham’s works did not have that status. They were, however, accorded by God an analogous kind of value with respect to the typological stage represented by the old covenant …. It was only a typological pointer but the obedience of Abraham that God assessed as meritorious on these two occasions was richly symbolic of Messiah’s mission (KP 325-26, emphasis added).

Whether we are talking about Noah, Abraham, David, or corporate Israel, these sinners did not themselves merit blessings in the same sense that Adam could have or that Christ did. Rather, God invested the imperfect obedience of sinful men with symbolic significance so that within the logic of the typological picture their obedience could function as the legal ground of blessing (which is a significant part of what Kline means when he says an act is “meritorious”). Their obedience was not, in itself, truly meritorious, since that would require their obedience to have occurred under a true covenant of works. Rather, their obedience occurred under a typological covenant of works, and so their obedience was a “typological pointer” that looked back to the obedience Adam failed to yield and forward to the obedience of the second Adam.

Additionally, Kline made it clear that God’s appointment of national Israel to be a type of Christ’s probation under the works principle was itself a privilege of grace:

The Old Covenant order, theirs by national election, was one of highest historical privilege. And while a works principle was operative both in the grant of the kingdom to Abraham and in the meting out of typological kingdom blessings to the nation of Israel, the arrangement as a whole was a gracious favor to fallen sons of Adam, children of wrath deserving no blessings, temporal or eternal (GHHM 128, emphasis added).

That last clause is particularly telling and directly contradicts the central claim of MM. Remember, the fundamental theological error of Klinean republication, in their view, is the assertion that fallen sinners can merit or extract temporal blessings from God. In the above quote, Kline explicitly rejects that. To the degree that he speaks of sinners (whether Noah, Abraham, or the Israelites) having a kind of “merit” (typological merit) in the post-Fall situation it is only because God in his grace had appointed these sinners to serve as types of Christ and accorded their sinful works a value analogous to the merit of Christ. The entire arrangement (national Israel as a typal kingdom under a typological covenant of works) “was a gracious favor to fallen sons of Adam.” The Israelites were sinners “deserving no blessings, temporal or eternal.” So it is simply not the case that, for Kline, “the fact that Israel’s works are those of fallen sinful creatures is completely irrelevant” (MM 69).

In sum, the core argument of Merit and Moses against Klinean republication rests on two mistakes. First, they charge Kline with a voluntaristic view of merit, a view that he never held and which they are unable to document from his writings. But second, with that mistaken understanding of Kline’s view of merit in place, they engage in equivocation and say that when Kline speaks of Noah’s or Abraham’s or Israel’s “merit” after the Fall, he is using that term in the same sense as in his discussion of the merit of Adam and Christ. But Kline clearly qualifies his discussion of post-Fall merit and sets it apart as qualitatively different. He makes clear that in these post-Fall cases he is referring to imperfect obedience that has been “invested by the Lord with typological significance,” an investment which is itself an act of grace. And so it is the fallacy of equivocation for the authors of MM to claim that, for Kline, the category of merit applies “equally” to Christ, Adam, Israel (MM 68, 112).

GHHM = God, Heaven, and Har Magedon (2006)
KP = Kingdom Prologue (2006)

Merit and Moses: Response to the Core Argument, Part 1

I have summarized the argument of MM, surveying its development in three stages (Parts 1–3 of the book). I have tried to be as objective as possible in reporting and summarizing the book’s critique of Klinean republication. Now the time has come to respond. There are so many claims in this book, it is difficult to decide where to start. It is tempting to go through the book in order and respond to point-by-point to each chapter. Another approach might be to begin at the end and rebut each of the 18 charges in the Conclusion. But I think such shot-gun approaches would yield a diluted response. Instead, I’ve decided to begin by responding to their core argument.

Let’s review their core argument. The authors of MM claim Kline engaged in a two-step process: first, he redefined merit as whatever God says it is; second, based on that redefinition of merit, he argued for the possibility that a group of sinners (the Israelites) could merit temporal blessings in the land. The logic of this move is as follows: if God has the liberty to stipulate that a given act of obedience is meritorious and worthy of receiving a reward, without requiring that the act be perfect or that the doer of the act be ontologically equal with God, then he has the liberty to stipulate that sinners can do imperfect works he will deem meritorious according to the terms of the covenant. Kline’s notion that God can define merit in whatever way he wants to define it is the basis of Kline’s thesis that the Mosaic covenant republished the covenant of works with a group of sinners (the Israelites). Because of God’s freedom to ignore considerations of perfection and ontology, God was able, by his mere covenant word, to deem their imperfect and sinful works as meritorious (or at least potentially meritorious) in his sight.

This may sound persuasive to those predisposed to dislike Kline. But there is a major difficulty with it. The difficulty is that Kline never defined merit in that manner. While he would not have agreed with the authors of MM that for a work to be meritorious it must be performed by one who is ontologically equal with God, he did agree that it must be perfect, in accordance with his justice. Kline never wrote or implied that God has liberty to define merit by his mere word or will, untethered from his character as a God of perfect justice. One should be suspicious of this central claim in the book based on the simple observation that they provide hardly any quotes by Kline to support it.

They do have one lonely snippet of a quote. They quote Kline as saying: “God’s covenant Word is definitive of justice” (quoted at MM 68). But they have taken that quote out of context and twisted it to mean the opposite of Kline’s intent. Let’s read it in context, where it is clear that God’s justice (not his will) receives the emphasis:

Also involved in this radical revision of covenant theology is an assault on the justice of God, for entailed in the discounting of the merit of the act of probationary obedience is the setting up of a standard of justice above God and his judgments. To refuse to acknowledge the pure and perfect justice of God’s covenantal stipulation of a heavenly reward for the performance of the mandated probation task is to fail to recognize that God’s covenant Word is definitive of justice. It is to deny that the name of the Judge of all the earth is Just. (GHHM 64, emphasis added)

Kline did not claim that merit should be defined in purely voluntaristic terms as whatever God says it is. He closely tethered the concept of merit to the character of God, specifically, the justice of God. He viewed God’s covenant word as the revelation of God’s justice. God does not simply assign merit to some arbitrary deed by his mere will or word. Kline makes this crystal clear (and keep in mind that this paragraph is in the context of his discussion of the Adamic covenant of works, not the Mosaic covenant):

A proper approach will hold that God is just and his justice is expressed in all his acts; in particular, it is expressed in the covenant he institutes. The terms of the covenant—the stipulated reward for the stipulated service—are a revelation of that justice. As a revelation of God’s justice the terms of the covenant define justice. According to this definition, Adam’s obedience would have merited the reward of eternal life and not a gram of grace would have been involved (KP 115).

For Kline, we as creatures do not have permission from God to evaluate the terms of the covenant of works, measure things on an ontological scale of our choosing, and decide whether the terms of that covenant are just or whether the work demanded would merit the reward offered. Rather, the terms of the covenant (“the stipulated reward for the stipulated service”) reveal God’s justice. As creatures created in covenant with God, we don’t have secret access to the knowledge of God’s justice independently of the covenant.

So the first step of the core argument of MM is based on a misrepresentation of Kline’s definition of merit. It is simply not the case that Kline defined merit in a way that was based on God’s will apart from his nature as the God of justice, as if “merit is whatever God says it is” (MM 67).

GHHM = God, Heaven, and Har Magedon (2006)
KP = Kingdom Prologue (2006)

Merit and Moses: Summary of Their Argument, Part 3

We come now to Part 3: The Instability of the Republication Paradigm (Chs. 9–12). In this section, the authors of MM draw out what they believe are further implications of the republication paradigm, implications they see as disturbing the system of doctrine of the Westminster Standards. They charge Klinean republication with disturbing the Westminster Confession’s system of doctrine in four main areas:

• The covenant of works (Chapter 9): Klinean republication deviates from the Confessional definition of the covenant of works.
  
  
• The covenant of grace (Chapter 10): Klinean republication implies that the Mosaic covenant is a mixed covenant that contains incompatible principles of works and grace. In this way, Klinean republication is “a clear departure from the confessional conception of the Mosaic covenant as a pure covenant of grace in its substance” (MM 100, emphasis added).
  
  
• The merit of Christ (Chapter 11): Klinean republication compromises the necessity of Christ’s meritorious obedience and clouds the unique glory of Christ’s merit.
  
  
• The doctrine of good works (Chapter 12):  Klinean republication creates spiritual schizophrenia in the piety of OT and NT believers, encouraging them to a sense of entitlement, viewing God’s rewards for their good works as something they merited, rather than as his gracious acceptance of their flawed works.

Finally, in their Conclusion, they summarize their critique by listing 18 ways in which the republication paradigm disrupts the Confession’s system of doctrine. Most of these 18 points were already discussed at greater length in the body of the book.

To summarize:

Part 1 provides the background. They argue that Kline developed his republication paradigm in the context of the controversy over the teachings of Norman Shepherd. Kline over-reacted against Shepherd and went into a pendulum swing that deviated from the plumb line of the Westminster Confession.

Part 2 pinpoints what they perceive to be Kline’s fundamental error—his redefinition of merit in non-ontological terms as whatever God says it is. But that is just the beginning. Kline really went off the rails when he applied his new definition of merit to Israel in the post-Fall Mosaic covenant. This key move stands at the heart of the republication paradigm and is what allows Kline to say that sinners can merit or extract blessings from God.

Part 3 examines the ramifications of Klinean republication with regard to four important theological topics. Their implicit aim is to show that Klinean republication ought not to be tolerated in a church such as the OPC that confesses the Westminster Standards.

Merit and Moses: Summary of Their Argument, Part 2

Having established a presumption of guilt through their “plumb line and pendulum” analogy, the authors move on to Part 2: Redefining Merit: The Klinean Paradigm Shift (Chs. 5–8). It is in this section that we come to the heart of their case against Klinean republication. Their main argument can be stated succinctly:  in his zeal to maintain the clarity of the law-gospel contrast against the errors of Shepherd, Kline overreacted and defined merit in a novel way that departed from the Reformed tradition.

Before we can understand Kline’s novel definition of merit, we must understand how the Reformed tradition defined merit. In the view of the authors of MM, the traditional definition can be seen at least by implication in the Westminster Confession and the Canons of Dort, and more explicitly in Francis Turretin’s five conditions for “true merit” (MM 55-57). Drawing on these sources, the authors of MM boil merit down to the following definition: for a work to be truly meritorious it must be (1) absolutely perfect and (2) performed by one who is ontologically equal with God (MM 43, 106).

Of course, this means that the only true merit is the merit of Christ. If Adam had not sinned, even his obedience would not have qualified as true merit, since he would have met the first condition (perfect obedience) but not the second (ontological equality with God). Therefore, the MM authors argue, we must distinguish between “improper or covenant merit” and “proper or strict merit.” Adam would have been capable of the first, but not the second. Only Christ’s obedience qualifies as strict merit. 

Contrary to this traditional understanding of merit (with its two types, covenant merit vs. strict merit), Kline reacted against Shepherd and came up with a novel definition of merit. The authors claim that the core element in Kline’s redefinition of merit is the notion that God is at liberty to define any obedient act as meritorious by his mere will or word, without requiring perfection and without ontological considerations. “Merit is whatever God says it is” (MM 67).

This new definition of merit was originally developed by Kline in reference to the question whether Adam before the Fall could have merited the reward of eschatological advancement. That is a serious enough of a departure from the Reformed tradition. But having redefined merit as whatever God says it is, Kline (they claim) took things a step further. He applied this novel definition of merit, originally developed in reference to debate whether Adam could merit eschatological advancement in the pre-Fall covenant of works, to the post-Fall situation. If merit is whatever God says it is, and the work need not even be perfect, then sinners can merit blessings from God according to Kline. This is the reason Kline could speak of Noah, Abraham, and Israel meriting temporal blessings, even though they were sinners.

The central error of Klinean republication has now been pinpointed in the minds of the authors of MM. Kline’s “redefinition of merit . . . is central and foundational to the doctrine of republication” (MM 59). “By removing all ontological considerations, this redefinition of merit permits what the traditional view has rejected, namely, the possibility of any type of meritorious accomplishment by fallen man” (MM 77). This is Kline’s fundamental error in the minds of the authors of MM.

In his fifth-century debate with the heretic Pelagius, Augustine long ago refuted the idea that sinners could possibly do anything to merit God’s blessing. Kline has aligned himself with Pelagius and against Augustine. Positing even the possibility of post-Fall merit is a violation of baseline Augustinian and Reformed orthodoxy. Klinean republication has now been shown guilty of gross unorthodoxy, since it affirms that a group of fallen, sinful humans (the Israelites) could merit temporal blessings from God.