Covenant vs. Contract: No “Ifs, Ands, or Buts...” Only “Therefore…”
We talk about it all the time in Church, books, worship songs, Bible studies, or conversations: human’s natural tendency and struggle of applying human behavior, concepts, expectations, and categories to God. Obviously, because of the Fall - which severed our relationship with the Lord and twisted our human nature - we will always be dealing with the allure of imposing our nature onto the Lord’s. Also, the “Enemy” or Satan’s seemingly primary strategy of manipulation and sowing discord, doubt, or indifference within Christian’s is to create “lies” about God’s character, nature, and relationality with us. You don’t have read very far into Scripture to see this take place. In …show more content…
Contract”...
Where did this all start? The Rise of Federal Calvinism
Just like I did in my post “The Word vs. the word” this post will consist of me quoting A LOT of the work and the words of another man. It’s just always easier to quote others who are much smarter than you because, especially in my situation, my thoughts can become jumbled and I can do a poor job of explaining things sometimes. So, with that being said, for the majority of this post I will be summarizing and quoting one of the infamous Torrance family members and someone who has wrote specifically about this idea of “Covenant vs. Contract”: James B. Torrance (1). More specifically, I will be quoting from his very relevant essay “Covenant or Contract?: A Study of the Theological Background of Worship in Seventeenth-Century Scotland” of which I found in the appendices of the book edited by Chris Tilling called “Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul.” …show more content…
On the one hand, it was recognized that the concept of covenant was a central one in both the Old and New Testaments. On the other hand, the word was also a significant one in Scottish and English sociopolitical thought, not lest in the upheavals of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. With the breakup of feudalism, and the struggles for liberty, men made “bands” and “pacts” and “contracts” and “covenants” to defend their freedom and preserve the rights of the people vis-a-vis their sovereign and the rights of a sovereign vis-a-vis his subjects. The Westminster Assembly (through which the “Westminster Confessions of Faith” originated) met at a time when the whole nation (being James' home country of Scotland) was caught up in a struggle for freedom.”
James continues saying, “The background of much theological controversy was the emerging sociopolitical philosophy of “social contract,” “contract of government,” “the rights of man,” “natural law” - illuminated by the “light of reason” and given divine sanction by “revelation. This was the philosophy of the many puritans who left these shores (being Scotland’s) to get away from the “tyranny” of British kings and feudal overlords for the “free world”
We talk about it all the time in Church, books, worship songs, Bible studies, or conversations: human’s natural tendency and struggle of applying human behavior, concepts, expectations, and categories to God. Obviously, because of the Fall - which severed our relationship with the Lord and twisted our human nature - we will always be dealing with the allure of imposing our nature onto the Lord’s. Also, the “Enemy” or Satan’s seemingly primary strategy of manipulation and sowing discord, doubt, or indifference within Christian’s is to create “lies” about God’s character, nature, and relationality with us. You don’t have read very far into Scripture to see this take place. In …show more content…
Contract”...
Where did this all start? The Rise of Federal Calvinism
Just like I did in my post “The Word vs. the word” this post will consist of me quoting A LOT of the work and the words of another man. It’s just always easier to quote others who are much smarter than you because, especially in my situation, my thoughts can become jumbled and I can do a poor job of explaining things sometimes. So, with that being said, for the majority of this post I will be summarizing and quoting one of the infamous Torrance family members and someone who has wrote specifically about this idea of “Covenant vs. Contract”: James B. Torrance (1). More specifically, I will be quoting from his very relevant essay “Covenant or Contract?: A Study of the Theological Background of Worship in Seventeenth-Century Scotland” of which I found in the appendices of the book edited by Chris Tilling called “Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul.” …show more content…
On the one hand, it was recognized that the concept of covenant was a central one in both the Old and New Testaments. On the other hand, the word was also a significant one in Scottish and English sociopolitical thought, not lest in the upheavals of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. With the breakup of feudalism, and the struggles for liberty, men made “bands” and “pacts” and “contracts” and “covenants” to defend their freedom and preserve the rights of the people vis-a-vis their sovereign and the rights of a sovereign vis-a-vis his subjects. The Westminster Assembly (through which the “Westminster Confessions of Faith” originated) met at a time when the whole nation (being James' home country of Scotland) was caught up in a struggle for freedom.”
James continues saying, “The background of much theological controversy was the emerging sociopolitical philosophy of “social contract,” “contract of government,” “the rights of man,” “natural law” - illuminated by the “light of reason” and given divine sanction by “revelation. This was the philosophy of the many puritans who left these shores (being Scotland’s) to get away from the “tyranny” of British kings and feudal overlords for the “free world”