What is a Reformed Church: Covenant - Our Story (Part 3)

The Covenant at Creation: The Covenant of Works

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1). All things in space and time came into being by God speaking the universe into being. God created all things including mankind, with the first couple Adam and Eve being created by God and placed into the Garden of Eden.

At the beginning after creation, the first human couple were pure and sinless. God then made a covenant with them, which is commonly called the Covenant of Works, Covenant of Nature or Covenant of Creation. It is called a Covenant of Creation because it was made at creation and a Covenant of Nature because it was made with mankind in nature and natural harmony. But it is most commonly known as the Covenant of Works because in it there is a works principle, which is to say the principle that works of obedience to God would merit eternal life.

In Genesis 2:16, God gave Adam the command not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If he disobeyed and ate of the tree, he would certainly die. Conversely, if he obeyed the command, he would not die but will live, as the parallel with Christ shows (Rom. 5:12-19).

This works principle can be seen in passages such as Romans 2:1-11. God is a just God and here He reveals that doing good in obedience will most certainly be rewarded, and evil will be punished. The works principle is the basic principle of the Law, "Do this and Live" (Lev. 18:5, Rom. 10:5, Gal. 3:12). In the Covenant of Works, the works principle was at its peak. God has given His command, but will Adam obey the command and live? The subsequent narrative of the Fall (Gen. 3) showed us Adam's breaking of God's command and the subsequent judgments of God. Adam failed the test, and therefore all mankind now inherit Adam's guilt, and are sinful from birth. Death came to all men (Rom. 5:12), and thus all men die, spiritually now, and physically later.

The Covenant of Grace

God's plan however was to save His people, even from the foundation of the world. Therefore, the Gospel was proclaimed even in the midst of the pronouncement of judgment (Gen. 3:15). There will come a Savior, the Seed of the Women, who will crush the head of Satan and defeat him. This Covenant of Grace pushes forward through the Abrahamic, Mosaic and Davidic Covenant, each one building up towards the coming of the Servant-King, the Messiah. In the fullness of time, Jesus Christ came into the world, ministered in Israel, and died on the Cross for our sins. His death on the Cross satisfies the wrath of God (Rom. 3:25), and inaugurates the New Covenant (Heb. 8:13, 9:11-28). In this New Covenant, we now have a way back to God, not by works but by faith in Christ.

From the time of Christ's death on the Cross therefore, the promised Savior has arrived. Adam failed to be obedient and thus earned death. But for those in Christ, salvation is not about working to earn salvation but simply to truth in Christ, who earned our salvation for us by His life and death on the Cross. History began at the Garden of Eden, but it finds its zenith at Calgary. After millennia of waiting, the promised Messiah has finally arrived, and now we can turn to Him so that we can come back to God.

The end of the world

We are now situated in the time between Jesus' first coming and His second coming. Nearly 2000 years have passed by since our Savior first came to die for us. God has not told us when He will come back to bring an end to this world, when Christ comes again. But in that last day in the future, this world will come to its end. Nations and peoples will stand before God to give an account of their lives, and only those who have trusted in Christ will be saved on that day. In that great and terrible Day of the Lord, the earth will be burned by fire (2 Peter 3:12) and terrible judgments will consume the earth (the judgments in Revelations). There will come a new heavens and a new earth after that, where God and mankind can finally be together, in full fellowship, forever.

What is a Reformed Church: Covenant - Our Story (Part 2)

Before the world began: Covenant of Redemption

In the beginning, there was nothing but God. Then, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1). In the beginning, there was (past tense) the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God (Jn. 1:1). God existed before anything existed. He is eternity. Everything else is created and has a beginning. God is eternal and uncreated.

But the story started in eternity, before time started. In eternity, the Triune God planned the entire course of all creation. In eternity, God in His Triune Being focused on the centerpiece of His plan: the salvation of sinners. In this plan, the three persons of the Godhead came together and planned the salvation of God's people, for this is what God desires.

Scripture is clear about this plan. In Psalms 2:7, God the Father spoke of the decree that has already been made even before human rebellion, and thus in eternity. In Psalms 110, God plotted with God ("the LORD said to my Lord") for the kingly rule of the second lord ("the Son"). In John 5:19-28, Jesus spoke about the granting of authority from the Father (Jn. 5:22, 27) to accomplish the work God the Father gave Him to do. This happened in eternity because the imparting of "life of Himself" (Jn. 5:26) from the Father to the Son is in eternity. In his High Priestly prayer, Jesus revealed to us this plan when He spoke about the giving of all authority to Him (Jn. 17:2) before the world began (Jn. 17:24).

In Zechariah 6:13, the "counsel of peace" is made between "the Branch" and the priest on his throne. This cryptic language is strange until we figure out "the Branch" refers to the Messiah, of which Josiah is a mere type pointing to the Messiah. But what makes it even strange is that we have another person, a priestly figure, who is occupying the same throne, the same space. But how can two people occupy the same space, unless they are actually one? Thus, the counsel of peace is the covenant between the Messiah (God the Son) and God the Father, who are and is one.

What is this plan? In Psalms 110:4, the Son is termed a priest forever "in the order of Melchizedek" which is the eternal priesthood without beginning or end (Heb. 7:3. 15-20). In this covenant, the plan of salvation was stated. In eternity past, this plan of salvation, this counsel of peace, this pact of salvation (pactum salutis) was made.

God the Father made an agreement, made a covenant, with God the Son through God the Holy Spirit. In this pre-temporal, pre-creation covenant, God the Father gave the Son rule and authority, giving Him an eternal priesthood, with the purpose of giving Him the preeminence, the name above all other names (Eph. 1:21; Col. 1:18, Phil. 2:9). God the Son as part of His priesthood agreed to come down to be the sacrifice at the Cross for the salvation of His people (Heb. 9:12), and then after ascension He now is seated as King at the right hand of God the Father, and as priest in the act of intercession for His people (Heb. 7:25). As reward for His part in fulfilling the covenant, God the Son is granted a people, the people whom He has died for, a people to be His Bride (Rev. 21:2). And through it all, all glory rebounds upon God the Father (1 Cor. 15:28) even as all glory goes to the Son with the preeminence, the name above all other names.

The Covenant of Redemption is the covenant before all covenants. It sets the stage for the unfolding plan of God to work in the flow of history, the jewel of God's plan amidst the whole of creation. Before time and history has even began, God has already set the tone of the entire story, so that all things and events will develop for His glory, and our benefit.

What is a Reformed Church: Covenant - Our Story (Part 1)

Narrative and History

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 has been pleased to express by way of covenant (WCF 7:1)

Narratives have a beginning and an end. History likewise starts somewhere and has an end. The history of World War I normally begins at the flashpoint of the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, although historians will look further back for causes that led to the war. The end of World War I is at the signing of the Versailles Treaty that formally ended the war. Narratives, stories and histories — all these give us a sense of what is happening and why, and place people and events in the stories in context.

When we ask question about who we are and why we are here, these questions can only be properly understood from the viewpoint of our Creator God. And the Creator God is the Lord and Creator of all things, and thus He is Lord of history. History is His story, and we living in our times situated in this story. The small narratives of our lives, from our births to our deaths, intersect with the far grander scale of God's big story from the beginning of this universe to its end.

God is God, and as such He is infinite. How can we finite creatures understand an infinite God? The Scriptures of course is God's revelation to us, and through that authority, we can come to know Him. But how about God working in history? To just have the Scriptures without the stories in Scripture is to make Christianity about absolute principles only, and God is thus a remote deity of laws and rules. The narrative in Scripture however shows us the greater story of the world we live in, and help us to know our place in it. It shows us how God works, and how we are to relate to this God who has shown us who He is and what He has done.

Covenant - Structure of the story

Inherent in Reformed doctrine is the view that the notion of "covenant" is the thing that holds the story of God's working in history together; God works and relates to the world through the making of covenants. "Covenant" can be described as an agreement made by one or more parties that describe how the parties are to relate to each other. As God's story, all covenants are unilaterally imposed, which is to say that God alone makes up the rules of how the relationships between Him and others work. But each covenant can be either unilateral or bilateral in the conditions each side has to fulfill to continue the relationship. Through a succession of covenants, God's story and the history of the workings of the universe unfolds.

The true story of the world

In this world, many people have a view of history, the "secularist" view, that omits God out of the picture. The history of the cosmos for them starts with the Big Bang, followed by billions of years of star and solar system development, then about 4.5 billion years of changes on the earth. Humans evolve from primordial apes within the last million years, human civilization started a few thousand years back, complete with religions, arts and sciences. The universe will continue to develop and atrophy a few billion years more, and the ultimate end of history will either be the heat death of the universe, or a big crunch destroying the universe (and perhaps starting a new one). In this view of history, each human individual lives a life that has no true meaning, only creating meaning for him or herself. Joining a cause (social, political, philosophical, religious) in this scenario has as much to do with, or even more than, creating meaning in life as it is about the exact details of the cause. Or one can focus on getting wealth and on personal pleasure and enjoyment in this life as one's meaning in life. One's personal story in the secularist view is subjective, and for the most part function independently of the story of our universe.

Over and against this view of the world's history is God's view of history, which God asserts to be the only true account of history. In God's view of history, it begins with God in eternity, then God creates the universe, and then mankind. The first couple Adam and Eve however disobeyed God, causing disruption to happen to the world, following which they were removed from God's presence. Until the time of Christ, humanity were living in darkness and sin, until Christ came and the Gospel is being proclaimed to the nations. As people repent, they are saved from their sins and wickedness as the Gospel goes forth. This time between Jesus' first and second coming is our time. When Christ comes again in the future, there will be judgment of the wicked, and the burning up of the current universe leading to the renewal of the universe into the new heavens and the new earth, where righteousness and peace will once against rule the earth from the throne of Almighty God.

As it can be seen, the secularist view of history and God's view of history is in conflict with each other. Both cannot be true. Granted, there are lots of places where overlap is possible, but on the major events, the two contradict each other. Which account is true? The Scriptures, being our ultimate authority, say that the biblical story is the true one. How are we then to understand why the secularist story is false?

The question is which one is true ultimately stems from which authority do we believe in. On the Christian side, we have God and the Bible. On the secularist side, we have what is known as empiricism, that is the study of the world through scientific experiments. Science of course has been a great tool to understand the world and to improve our lives. But is it competent to understand the history of the world and is future?

To this question, we must say no. In order for science experiments to proceed, two of the three conditions must be known: the initial conditions, the final conditions, and the process or law that affects the thing being studied. When it comes to history, we have the final conditions, we guess the initial conditions, and we assume the processes are either uniform or that there are no changes along the way to the system being studied. Only the final conditions are known, while the other two can be guessed but cannot be proven as fact. When it comes to the future, we have the initial conditions, and we assume a close system for our experiments, which on a cosmic scale might not be true. Basically, when it comes to history and the future, science has insufficient evidence to prove anything definitively. What we have at best are theories based upon good guesswork.

Even that is insufficient however, for we note that science, due to its method, must assume the workings of God to be absent. That is good for dealing with normal processes in the world, but not if God has actually intervened in history. If God is excluded on a matter of principle, then of course any act of God cannot be comprehended by science.

The problems with the secularist narrative of the world should be plain by now. First, it is incapable of proving anything definitely, and the assumptions it makes to produce its narrative might be, and some of them are, false. For example, if God actually caused a worldwide flood in the time of Noah, then the assumption that the current rate of erosion and deposition of soil cannot be extrapolated into the past to derive an age of ancient geological structures. Second, it assumes a closed system where God does not work, but God does work in miracles, and therefore science by definition cannot know if miracles have or have not happened.

The Christian view of history thus stands on the authority of the all-knowing God, and Reformed Christian believe in God's authority more than the fallible interpretations and sometimes unwarranted conclusions of those who abuse science to create secular meta narratives of the world. In the end, the question is: Who do you trust? Do you trust in the words of God, the One who claims to give eye-witness account of history, or do you trust in the guesswork of men? The Reformed church, while not denigrating science, keeps science to its proper sphere and believes in God's view of history above the world's view of history.

What is a Reformed Church: Prolegomena (Part 2)

Thematic markers of a Reformed Church

The Reformed Church is a church rooted in history. As I have mentioned, two markers of the modern age have been a trend towards the priority of individual piety, and a trend towards divorcing the church from her history through the centuries. The Reformed Church reject both of these trends, while desiring to be biblical and historical.

Before we move on to the specifics, what are the thematic markers of the Reformed Church, markers which form the foundational pillars for a Reformed view concerning the faith and the church? The first thematic marker is that of the unity of the internal and the external. This runs counter to the first trend. But what does this actually mean? The "internal" or "individual" refers to one's individual piety. Thus it refers to private reading of the Bible in private devotions. It refers to one's time of prayer before God. It refers to personal fasting and any other exercises of piety (if any) a Christian may be engaged in in his personal time.

In contrast to this the "external" or "corporate" refers to what one does in the public setting of corporate worship. Therefore, it refers to going to the public worship at church. It refers to partaking of the Lord's Supper. It refers to going for prayer meetings at church, fellowship events at church, and participating in any event done in public in the life of the church.

The Reformed church holds that the internal and the external should be linked. They are not to be equated, as if going to church is the same as reading the Bible by yourself, but neither should they be pitted against each other. Therefore, a Christian ought to attend worship on the Lord's Day, Sunday, as well as reading the Bible by himself. Neglecting personal devotion is to fall into the error of formalism, that is just going through the motions of religion. But neglecting to join in the church's worship is to fall into the opposite error of pietism or spiritualism, that is pretending to obey God by being "spiritual" while denying what God has actually told us to do.

The second thematic marker is that the Church is a historical Christian church. Primitivism, or the error that always desire to go back to the example of the apostolic church, is rejected by the Reformed church in her purest times. Primitivism is wrong not because the apostolic church is wrong but because trying to emulate the apostolic church flattens out historical differences.

Think about it: We recognize there are changes in a language throughout time, and cultural values change over time, so why should we think that there are no real differences that should exist between the church today and the church during the time of the apostles? In the Reformed church, we hold to real historical progress, but this progress is one of the movement of God's redemptive plan, not of Man's advancement in knowledge. True biblical progress is a progress of God's plan through time. Man's idea of progress, especially as coming from the Enlightenment, is all about Man getting better and better. The Reformed church believes in the former progression of God's plan while rejecting the latter view of human progress that downplays and denies sin.

The progression of God's plan implies that God is constantly at work in the Church. Therefore, the church is always situated in history. While we ought to always take Scripture as our authority, yet we ought to interact with and appropriate the treasure and insights given to us by the pastors and theologians that come before us.

So what does this look like? It means that we see how God has developed his Church and critically engage our forebears and adopt their insights where biblical, on the issues that we might face. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and do not have to re-invent the wheel every single generation. It means that when we come to any topic we might be interested in, we learn how Christians before us have thought about the topic and critically engage it with the Scriptures.

The church in older times have given us much in this regard. Besides the writings and reflections of Christian pastors and theologians through the centuries, what stands out are what we call the creeds and confessions of the Church. Creeds and confessions are official documents issued by the church to tell us what they hold to be true. They are not private reflections on biblical topics, but public statements on those topics, and thus they have an air of authority around them. The creeds and confessions come into being as God's plan progresses through the history of the church, and thus they acquire an important place in the life and beliefs of the church.

The Reformed church, as a historical church, holds to the Christian creeds and confessions. Of the Christian creeds of the catholic faith (not Roman Catholic, but ancient catholic and early medieval catholic), we hold to the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed (or Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed), the Athanasian Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon. Of the confessions of faith, the Reformed church has formulated various confessions depending on where they are located (whether they began in France, England, Netherlands or Germany) and depending on their interactions with each other and the Lutherans. Of the Reformed Confessons, there are the Three Forms of Unity (Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession of Faith, Canons of Dordt), the Second Helvitic Confession of Faith, the 39 Articles of the Church of England, the Westminster Standards (Westminster Confession of Faith, Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechisms etc), the Savoy Confession of Faith and the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. Depending on which path Christians have followed and will follow, they would confess one or more of these Reformed Confessions. Some of these confessions differ from each other on doctrines that are important yet do not affect the essence of the Reformed view. Thus, various Reformed churches might differ on important doctrines without either of them being un-Reformed.

So, in conclusion of this section, the thematic markers of a Reformed Church are as follows:

1. We hold to the unity of internal and external piety
2. We hold to a historical progression of God's plan in the history of the church
3. Therefore, we hold to the importance of consulting the wisdom and insights of our forebears.
4. Therefore, we hold to the importance of the creeds and confessions of the historic Christian church.

These are the thematic markers of the Reformed church, which is to say the framework the Reformed church utilizes in thinking about doctrines and all other topics, to which we shall look at next.

[to be continued]

What is a Reformed Church: History (Part 1)

Brief history of the Church: Situating the Reformed Church

There are many different churches in the world today. Some call themselves "Presbyterian," others "Methodist," others "Assemblies of God," and others claim to be just "Christian." All Christians follow Christ, so why are there so many churches? Also, why "reformed"? Isn't that another division of Christians in a world where there are already too many divisions?

The issue of why is there such a thing as a "reformed" church is one rooted in history. To understand what "reformed" is and why it is important that the church be "reformed," we need to understand some basic church history

The church as we know it began at Pentecost, as described in Acts 2. After the times of the apostles, the church continue to grow and multiply in Gentile areas especially within the Roman Empire. As the church grew, it began to express her thoughts and teachings using Greco-Roman ways of thought, and came to know itself as the Catholic Church. As the Roman Empire declined, the Ancient Catholic Church took on many of the previous functions of the declining Roman Empire, resulting in the medieval papacy and the Medieval Catholic Church. That church became corrupt over time, thus in the 16th century the Reformation erupted onto the scene of history.

The Reformation was a call by the Reformers to return back to the Scriptures, to pure worship of God, to devotion towards God that is line with what is taught in Scripture. The Reformers sought to reform the church as they recognized that the Medieval Catholic Church was a corruption of the true church. The Reformers believed in the promise of Matthew 16:18 that the gates of hell will not prevail upon the church, and therefore the Reformation was not about overthrowing the Medieval Church and creating a new one in its place. The Reformers saw themselves as "Reformed Catholics" as they wanted to preserve what were true in the Medieval Church while at the same time removing the corruptions within her.

After the times of the Reformation, two major trends began to emerge. The first trend is that of a privitization of faith, or making faith an internal, individual matter between a person and God. After the Reformation, the beginnings of Pietism in the 17th century and the Enlightenment in the 18th century centers matters of faith onto the private and the individual. This trend is not necessarily bad since faith is indeed deeply personal, but the modern trend over-corrected such that the corporate and external dimensions of faith have been minimized or even rejected. The second trend is that of divorcing the Christian faith from the history of the church. Whereas the church all the way until the Reformation has always seen herself as being in continuity with the past, in the modern period, people began to recast the Reformers in their image and think the Reformation was all about rejecting all of church history and going back directly to the apostolic period. In scholarly speak, the first trend is known as pietism and invidualism, and the second trend is known as primitivism. These two trends combined have contributed to the many Christian movements and multiplication of denominations in the Age of Modernity (approximately 17th - 21st century), with mixed benefits to Christianity.

The Reformed Church is the Church coming out of the 16th century Reformation, before the two major trends in the modern age transformed what people thought about Christianity and practiced it. Needless to say, the Reformed Church rejects both of these trends. While we do not believe in going back to the 16th century as if it were a golden age, we think the Reformers and the Reformed Confessions penned during those times to be more correct in their views of the Christian faith and of the church.

[to be continued]