The Upper Register

Republication podcast interview

I want to thank Peter Bell and Nick Fullwiler for having me on the Guilt Grace Gratitude podcast to discuss the topic of Republication.

Get the episode on Apple, Spotify, or watch it on YouTube:

We covered the following topics:

• Defining Republication (see my 5/29/2022 blog post for more)
• The broader covenantal context of Republication
• The Scriptural basis of Republication
• How Republication is consistent with the Westminster Confession
• How Republication has been misunderstood
• Errors that flow from rejecting Republication (Theonomy and Federal Vision)
• How Republication helps us understand the Gospel

Is the Mosaic Covenant an Administration of the Covenant of Grace?

As my readers know, I hold to republication – the view that the works principle in the pre-fall covenant with Adam was republished at the typological level in the Mosaic economy. Because of this, many ask, “Can you affirm that the Mosaic covenant is an administration of the covenant of grace?” Sometimes the question comes with an attorney-like insistence, Yes or No! But this is not a question that can be answered Yes or No without qualifications. So here is my best attempt to answer that question.

I think it is valid to say that the Mosaic covenant was a “unique” administration of the covenant of grace. I borrow the term “unique” from Michael Horton who uses it to take account of Paul’s teaching that the law was a temporary guardian until Christ (Gal 3:19-24). As Dr. Horton wrote in a recent four-views book: “The Sinai covenant is a unique administration of the covenant of grace in that it offers a parenthetical-typological system for the church’s adolescence.”[1]

What makes it a unique administration of the covenant of grace is that it has a broad and a narrow aspect. The Mosaic covenant in the broad sense is the Mosaic economy as a whole, that is, the Mosaic economy as continuing the Abrahamic promise (Gal 3:17) and as including the sacrificial system which provided a means of atonement for sin. In that broad sense, the Mosaic covenant is an administration of the covenant of grace. But it also has a narrow aspect, and that is what makes it unique. The Mosaic covenant in the narrow sense is the same as Paul’s term “the law,” the commandments along with the offered blessings for obedience and curses threatened for disobedience (Lev 18:5; Deut 28). In this sense the law was a temporary guardian until the Seed should come. It was given to drive Israel to Christ and thus for an ultimately gracious purpose.

This language of the broad and narrow sense of “Mosaic covenant” is fairly standard. Dr. Horton says it derives from Calvin:

Calvin himself acknowledges these two senses: “The law has a twofold meaning; it sometimes includes the whole of what has been taught by Moses, and sometimes that part only which was peculiar to his ministration, which consisted of precepts, rewards, and punishments …. Whenever the word law is thus strictly taken, Moses is by implication opposed to Christ: and then we must consider what the law contains, as separate from the gospel.”[2]

In their helpful book on covenant theology, Michael Brown and Zach Keele explain it this way:

To understand the Mosaic covenant properly, we must view it in both its broad and narrow senses. In its broad sense, the Mosaic covenant is an administration of the covenant of grace …. In its narrow sense, however, the Mosaic covenant is a covenant of law …. We must first focus on the Mosaic covenant in its narrower sense (that is, law) to fit it properly into God’s overall purpose of the covenant of grace …. God gave the strict Mosaic covenant to show Israel and all humanity that no man can be justified by the works of the law (Rom 3:19-20).[3]

Complementary to the broad vs. narrow language, there is Meredith Kline’s language of the two layers or strata of the Mosaic economy.

At the same time, Paul affirmed that the Mosaic Covenant did not annul the promise arrangement given earlier to Abraham (Gal 3:17). The explanation for this is that the old covenant order was composed of two strata and the works principle enunciated in Leviticus 18:5, and elsewhere in the law, applied only to one of these, a secondary stratum. There was a foundational stratum having to do with the personal attainment of the eternal kingdom of salvation and this underlying stratum, continuous with all preceding and succeeding administrations of the Lord’s Covenant of Grace with the church, was informed by the principle of grace (cf., e.g., Rom 4:16). Because the Abrahamic covenant of promise found continuity in the Mosaic order at this underlying level, it was not abrogated by the latter. The works principle in the Mosaic order was confined to the typological sphere of the provisional earthly kingdom which was superimposed as a secondary overlay on the foundational stratum.[4]

Now perhaps another follow-up question may arise: “Is the entire Mosaic covenant, in both its narrow sense and in its broader sense, an administration of the covenant of grace?” I can affirm that, but I would want to clarify the two distinct ways in which “the narrow sense” and “the broader sense” are related to the covenant of grace.

I affirm that the Mosaic covenant in the broader sense (the entire Mosaic dispensation or economy) is an administration of the covenant of grace. There are a myriad of ways we see this. We see it in the prologue to the Decalogue, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” We see it in the intercession of Moses who appealed to the Abrahamic promise (Exod 32:13; Deut 9:27). We see it in the fact that the two tablets of the law were placed inside the ark of the covenant under the mercy seat (Exod 25:16; 40:20; Deut 10:2, 5; Heb 9:4). But most clearly we see it in the Levitical sacrificial system (the Passover Lamb, the Day of Atonement, etc.), which was a sacramental means of grace by which the Israelites received ahead of time, by faith, the benefits of the work of the Messiah to come. As Kline notes, “Elements of redemptive grace were present in and around the transaction [of the Sinaitic  covenant],” and he goes on to cite the prologue of the Decalogue and the location of the tablets under the mercy seat as two chief examples.[5]

But what about the Mosaic covenant in the narrow sense? Can it also rightly be called an administration of the covenant of grace? I can see how it could, but I would want to clarify what that means. It is a foundational Reformed teaching that the law (“Do this and live”) is not, in and of itself, the covenant of grace. The Mosaic law is a republication of the principle of the covenant of works. The law says, “Do this and live” (Lev 18:5). The gospel (the covenant of grace) says, “Christ has done it; receive it and live.” But although the law is not the gospel, it was given to advance the covenant of grace. It does this by showing us that we cannot be justified by the works of the law and thus driving us to Christ. The law was a temporary guardian, the historical matrix for the incarnation, so that the Seed might be born under it, obey it, endure its curse, and thus fulfill it in our place (Gal 3:13; 4:4; Rom 10:4).

Horton quotes Geerhardus Vos:

As Vos states, “The covenant with Israel served in an emphatic manner to recall the strict demands of the covenant of works … It truly contained the content of the covenant of works. But—and one should certainly note this—it contains this content as made serviceable for a particular period of the covenant of grace.”[6]

Horton then adds his own comment fleshing this out:

Although the Sinaitic covenant is based on law, it is only such in the interests of holding out the promise of the covenant of grace. The ultimate promise of a worldwide family of Abraham in a renewed creation is unconditional in its basis, while the continuing existence of the national theocracy as a type of that everlasting covenant depended on Israel’s obedience. Therefore, the Sinai covenant was an administration of the covenant of grace in that it served to further the interests of that gracious promise.[7]

With that qualification—“in that it served to further the interests of that gracious promise”—the law can be called an administration of the covenant of grace, even though the law, in and of itself, is not the covenant of grace. Kline put it this way: “The Law covenant was a sub-administration of the Covenant of Grace, designed to further the purpose and program of the gospel.”[8]

 

[1] Michael S. Horton, “A Covenant Theology Response,” in Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies: Four Views on the Continuity of Scripture, ed. Brent E. Parker and Richard J. Lucas (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 197.

[2] Horton, “Covenant Theology,” in Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies, 38; quoting Calvin’s commentary on Romans (at Rom 10:5).

[3] Michael G. Brown and Zach Keele, Sacred Bond: Covenant Theology Explored (Grandville, MI: Reformed Fellowship, 2012), 102-4.

[4] Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 321.

[5] Meredith G. Kline, By Oath Consigned: A Reinterpretation of the Covenant Signs of Circumcision and Baptism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 23-24.

[6] Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, Single-Volume Edition, trans. and ed. by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020), 348 (2.130 in the multi-volume edition).

[7] Horton, “Covenant Theology,” in Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies, 47.

[8] Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 128.

Republication, Part 5: Freed from the Law as a Covenant

There are a number of passages in Galatians and Romans where Paul teaches that believers are freed from the law:

Gal 2:19: Through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God

Gal 3:23-25: We are no longer under a guardian

Gal 4:4: Born under the law to redeem those who were under the law

Gal 5:18: If you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law

Rom 6:14-15: We are not under law but under grace

Rom 7:1-6: We have died to the law through the body of Christ

Antinomians take these texts to mean that believers are freed from the moral law as rule of life. A better explanation is to utilize the concept of Republication and to suggest that what Paul is affirming is that we are freed from the law as a covenant of works. On this view, Paul is not denying the third use of the law (which he affirms, e.g., in Rom 6:15-22; 8:4).

This is the standard Reformed position, as seen in the Westminster Confession: “Although true believers be not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified, or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life informing them of the will of God, and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly” (WCF 19.6; cp. WLC #97).

Republication enables us to answer the antinomian interpretation of the Pauline “not under law” texts. Some have tried to get around this by suggesting that when Paul says we are “not under law” he means we are “not under legalism” or we have been “freed from a legalistic misinterpretation and abuse of the law.” But that theory breaks down when one realizes that Paul affirms that we died to the law through union with Christ in his death and resurrection. He does not say that God delivered us from a cognitive misunderstanding and misuse of the law. He says God delivered us from the law itself “through the body of Christ” (Rom 7:4). The Mosaic law pronounces a curse on all who do not keep it perfectly (Gal 3:10; Deut 27:26), but Christ “became a curse for us” (Gal 3:13). Christ was “born under the law to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal 4:4). Thus, “the law” in these passages cannot be a “legalistic misuse of the law” but “the Mosaic law as a covenant of works.”

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Republication, Part 4: The Breakable Covenant - Jeremiah 31

One of Kline’s most powerful arguments for Republication is the fact that the Old Covenant was breakable: “Behold, the days are coming, declares YHWH, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares YHWH” (Jer 31:31-32). Though YHWH was their husband, Israel was unfaithful, the covenant itself was broken, and YHWH divorced Israel (Jer 3:1, 8; cp. Hosea 1:9; 2:2). But if the Old Covenant was breakable, as Jeremiah plainly says that it was, how can it be the covenant of grace pure and simple?

Kline writes:

Paul was resuming Jeremiah’s classic analysis of the covenants when he contrasted the new covenant to the old (the old viewed in the restricted but distinctive terms of its typological dimension). In contrast to the new covenant which could not be broken, founded as it was on God’s sovereign, forgiving grace in Christ, the old covenant, according to Jeremiah, was breakable (Jer 31:32). Individual members of the new covenant community might prove false and be broken off as branches from a tree while the covenant tree remained intact, pruned and flourishing. But the old covenant’s typological kingdom order as such could be and was terminated. The axe of God’s judgment was ultimately laid unto the roots of the tree and the tree itself was felled. Jeremiah’s identification of the old covenant as breakable was the equivalent of an assertion that it lacked the guarantee afforded by the grace principle and was instead based on the principle of works (Kingdom Prologue, 322).

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Republication, Part 3: Paul Teaches It in Galatians 3

I would argue that Republication is taught by Paul in Galatians 3. The Judaizers viewed the Mosaic covenant as an addition to the Abrahamic covenant showing, as claimed, that the blessing must be received by obeying the Mosaic law. But Paul corrects them by explaining that the Abrahamic covenant is fundamentally a gracious, promissory covenant in which the blessing is received by faith. Although the Mosaic covenant (“the law”) came 430 years after the promise, it did not annul the prior Abrahamic covenant of promise ratified by God’s self-maledictory oath. Why then the law? It was “added” (top layer) until the Seed should come, who would be born under it to bear its curse and fulfill its demands in our place, thereby securing the blessing.

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Republication, Part 2: The Two Layers and Typological Legibility

Republication depends on the notion that the old covenant order was composed of two layers: the national-typological (upper) layer and the personal-soteriological (lower) layer. At the lower layer, the old testament saints were saved by faith in the Messiah to come as part of the one covenant of grace that begins with the first promise of the gospel after the Fall (Gen 3:15) and continues unbroken into the new covenant. The works principle in the old covenant, the probationary arrangement akin to the Adamic covenant of works, was confined to the upper, national-typological layer. National Israel, as a corporate Adam, was on probation in the land. Israel had to be righteous in order to retain the land. But where does Kline get this idea of the two layers? It comes from the concept of two-level fulfillment.

And what about the problem that Israel was far from being perfectly righteous and yet retained the land for a long time prior to the exile? This issue is explained by Vos and Kline in terms of the concept of typological legibility:

Vos: “The theocracy typified nothing short of the perfected kingdom of God, the consummate state of Heaven .... Law-observance, if not the ground for receiving, is yet made the ground for retention of the privileges inherited. Here it can not, of course, be denied that a real connection exists .... The connection ... belongs not to the legal sphere of merit, but to the symbolico-typical sphere of appropriateness of expression. As stated above, the abode of Israel in Canaan typified the heavenly, perfected state of God’s people. Under these circumstances the ideal of absolute conformity to God’s law of legal holiness had to be upheld .... The requirement could not be lowered. When apostasy on a general scale took place, they could not remain in the promised land” (Biblical Theology, 126-27).

Kline: “The typological objective in the case of the Israelite kingdom was to teach that righteousness and prosperity will be conjoined in the consummated kingdom. For the purpose of keeping that symbolic message readable, persistent wholesale apostasy could not be allowed to accompany possession of the promised inheritance. But, on the other hand, the pedagogical point of the typological arrangement could be satisfactorily made, in a positive fashion, in spite of the inevitable imperfections of the people individually and as a nation. In meting out the blessings and curses of the Mosaic Covenant, the Lord applied the standard of symbolical appropriateness or typological legibility” (Kingdom Prologue, 239-40).

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Republication, Part 1: What Is It?

Republication is a debated topic today and is often misunderstood. The idea is not that the Adamic covenant of works was republished for Israel at Sinai without change. Kline argues that national Israel was “under probation in a covenant of works” (Kingdom Prologue, 352), not “the” covenant of works. That is why I pefer to speak of “typological republication.” The key to making sense of this is to recognize that the Mosaic economy was complex. More things are going on there than simply administering the one covenant of grace. According to Kline, “The old covenant order was composed of two strata,” and “The works principle in the Mosaic order was confined to the typological sphere of the provisional earthly kingdom which was superimposed as a secondary overlay on the foundational stratum” (KP 321). The foundational layer, the one covenant of grace, continues unbroken from Genesis 3:15 on. But at the secondary layer, a works principle is reenacted with national Israel in order to set the covenantal context for the exile and the coming of Christ, who was born under the law that he might perfectly fulfill it and win the eternal inheritance for us.

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Covenant Theology in BT Perspective: Abrahamic, Mosaic, New

Covenant Theology in biblical theological perspective observes the historical progression and interconnections between the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and New Covenants. Leviticus 26 is a critical passage, for here the outpouring of the vengeance of the Mosaic Covenant is predicted. But Israel’s restoration after the exile, in fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant (Lev 26:42), is also foretold, which gives rise to the hope of a New Covenant. This covenantal triangle is the engine that drives the narrative arc of redemptive history, with the great preaching prophets (e.g., Isaiah) standing at the intersection, looking back on the ruins of the Old Covenant and forward to the glory of the coming New Covenant in Christ.

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Merit and Moses: All Posts Combined

I have combined my series of posts responding to the book Merit and Moses into a single document. It comes to 43 pages, single spaced. I also added this Conclusion at the end:

The authors of Merit and Moses seriously misrepresent Kline when they claim he defined merit in voluntaristic terms, as whatever God says it is, untethered to his nature as a God of perfect justice. Taking their misrepresentation of Kline’s definition of merit as their unquestioned starting point, the authors proceed to level wild and irresponsible accusations. The most egregious accusation is their claim that Kline redefined merit with regard to Adam and Christ, specifically so that he could open up the possibility of sinners (e.g., Israel, patriarchs) meriting blessings from God. But Kline never made that move. He spoke of post-Fall “merit” only as obedience invested by God with typological significance, not as true merit. Oddly, at the beginning of the book, the authors pay lip service to the architectonic role typology plays in Kline’s thought. But in the course of their argument, they ignore Kline’s typological two-layer construct and interpret him within their own ordo salutis categories. The attack missiles launched by Merit and Moses miss their target by a wide margin.

Merit and Moses: Flawed Typology? Part 2

In contrast with the authors of MM—who deny that the imperfect obedience of OT saints can typify the perfect obedience of Christ (MM 130)—many Reformed commentators taught this very thing. I am no expert on 17th century Reformed literature, but I was able to find the following quotes just by searching Google Books.

In his dissertation, Why Heaven Kissed Earth: The Christology of the Puritan Reformed Orthodox Theologian, Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680)  [RHT 13; V&R, 2010], Mark Jones explains that

Goodwin argues that the eminent Old Testament saints were types of Jesus Christ .... Adam, Noah, Melchizedek, Joseph, Moses, Samson, David, and Solomon, for example, were all types of Jesus Christ (p. 93).

But how could sinful OT saints be types of Christ? In his treatise, Of Christ the Mediator, Goodwin explains:

The general rule which the apostles went by, and which the Jews themselves assented unto, and their teachers taught them, was, that whatever eminent and extraordinary excellency was found in any of their ancestors renowned in the Old Testament, or in the ceremonial law, that all such foresignified the Messiah to come, as the perfection and centre of them (Works of Goodwin, ed. Nichol, vol. 5, p. 150).

Or consider Thomas Taylor (1576–1633), an English Puritan who remained within the Church of England. He wrote a treatise titled, Christ Revealed, or The Old Testament explained: A treatise of the types and shadowes of our Saviour contained throughout the whole Scripture (1635). Taylor subdivides the types of Christ into holy persons and holy things. Under holy persons, he includes the following as types of Christ: Adam, Noah, Melchizedek, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Solomon, Jonah, and others.

I have not read the whole treatise, but I looked at his treatment of Noah. Taylor suggests that Noah was a type of Christ in seven ways. Relevant to our discussion here is the second way that Noah was a type of Christ. Quoting Gen 6:9 (“Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God” [KJV]), Taylor sees this similarity between Noah and Christ: “Both are said to be just and perfect; both said to walke with God.” However, there are differences between Noah’s righteousness and Christ’s, including the fact that “Noah was perfect but in part: Christ perfectly perfect” (pp. 10-11; Early English Books Online, via PRDL).

Samuel Mather (1626–1671) was a Puritan of the Independent variety. He was the older brother of Increase Mather (the father of Cotton Mather). For a time he served as chaplain of Magdalen College, Oxford, under the presidency of Thomas Goodwin. In a treatise titled, The Gospel of the Old Testament: an explanation of the types and figures by which Christ was exhibited under the legal dispensation, he wrote: 

Inasmuch as the holiest had their sins, we have further to observe, that they [OT saints] were not types of Christ in regard to their sinful failings, but only in their graces and excellences (p. 82 in the 1834 edition).

John Brown (1784–1858), grandson of John Brown of Haddington (1722–1787), was a minister and professor of exegetical theology in the Scottish Secession church. He wrote a book titled, The Sufferings and Glories of the Messiah (1853), which contained a detailed exegesis of Psalm 18 and Isaiah 53. He argued that Psalm 18 ought to be interpreted as a Messianic Psalm right along with Psalms 2, 16, 22, 40, and 110. He believed that in Psalm 18 “a greater than David is here—that, so far as the subject of the psalm is concerned, David is not here at all, except, it may be, in the way of allusive illustration” (p. 25). When he came to verses 20-24, he interpreted them as referring typologically to the merit of Christ:

In the fourth section of this Messianic psalm ... we find the beloved Servant of Jehovah, delivered from all his enemies and the power of the grave, representing, in his solemn thanksgiving, his deliverance and exaltation as the expression of Jehovah’s entire satisfaction with his conduct, and as the merited reward of his having become obedient—obedient even to the death .... “The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me ...” [Ps 18:20ff]. The words before us are an acknowledgment, on the part of the delivered and rewarded Messiah, of the righteousness of Jehovah in his deliverance and reward. The general idea is,—These wonderful works of Jehovah, which have just been commemorated, are the merited expression of his entire righteous approbation of, and most complacent holy delight in, his humbled and suffering Servant’s person and work (pp. 97-98, emphasis added).

John Brown has a footnote in which he quotes George Horne (1730–1792). Horne was a bishop in the Church of England who wrote A Commentary on the Book of Psalms (1771) that was widely influential in its time and in the subsequent century. Commenting on Psalm 18:20-24, Horne wrote:

Commentators have been much perplexed to account for these unlimited claims to righteousness made by David .... But if the Psalm be prophetical, and sung by the victorious monarch in the person of king Messiah, then do the verses now before us no less exactly than beautifully delineate that all-perfect righteousness wrought by the Redeemer, in consequence of which, he obtained deliverance for himself and his people. For “his” righteousness’ sake Jehovah was well pleased, and rewarded with everlasting felicity the unspotted purity of his works (p. 86).

I have no doubt that further research would turn up more quotes along these lines, but these are enough to provide a general idea. Reformed commentators do not seem to have any reluctance in seeing the imperfect obedience of certain OT saints as typological of the meritorious obedience of Christ. If we readily recognize the imperfect OT sacrifices as types of Christ’s passive obedience, why should there be any problem seeing the flawed obedience of certain OT saints as typological of Christ’s active obedience? I am not aware of any Reformed theologians who share the restrictive view of the authors of MM that imperfect obedience cannot typify perfect obedience. To the contrary, with just a little Internet searching (in English, not even trying Latin) it was not hard to find Reformed theologians and exegetes who took the opposite view. As Samuel Mather said, the OT saints “were not types of Christ in regard to their sinful failings, but only in their graces and excellences.”