All mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. . . . As therefore the bell that rings a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. . . . No man is an island, entire of itself . . . [a]ny man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.¹

These familiar words have been echoed by many souls in their own ways but, despite unique flairs and lilts, they challenge us all to escape a world of isolation. For my part, a childhood spent in agnosticism brought my teenage mind away from a world where I would live and die with no connection to the rest of the world, to faith in a God who loved me and gave Himself for me. In accepting Christ as my savior at a nondenominational evangelical congregation at the age of fifteen, there was an end to a world where I viewed myself as ultimately alone. Exiled from my deepest sentiments that we are not floating islands, the world of only greys and no contrast was despairing, and a relationship with the God of the universe seemed to be the panacea for the basic questions about the meaning of life.

In coming to Christ through evangelicalism, there was a strong sense of this relationship with God. But as time passed, new islands of isolation emerged. It seemed that as much as we had fellowship groups and the like, my faith was just that: mine, with no linkages to another’s. It was all about me and Jesus. And knowing my frailties, this was not something I could count upon. Even if I were more of a steadfast believer, other implications of this “me and Jesus” mentality troubled me. My children, as yet unborn, would have been viewed as largely disconnected from me in matters of faith. One practical consequence of this is that baptism would not be bestowed on them until the point where they had made their own individual profession of faith, and it seemed preferable if said profession came after some traumatic stage of rebellion. Even the basic eschatological structure of dispensational premillenialism had a world where the Church Age was hermetically sealed from that age of Adam, as was the age of Noah, and David, and perhaps others depending on one’s affinity to C.I. Scofield, or lack thereof.

And so it was that after 6 years of wrestling with evangelicalism, I wandered into the world of Reformed Presbyterian Christianity. What I found there was refreshing–in its view of the Covenant. In fact, the grandeur of its view of the Covenant was such that while having philosophical objections to Calvinism’s view of primary and secondary causes, I was excited enough about Covenant theology to become a member of a congregation before settling those matters about free will and the like. The mere fact that we were called to be members was enthralling to me, as my former spiritual home would make the absence of membership a mark of the purity of the faith. I realized that to say truly that no man is an island, we needed accountability–we needed the Covenant.

But that is enough autobiographical thought for one article that is meant to be more of an argument than a narrative.

This article will first describe the grandeur of Covenant theology as it is embraced and explained by those Protestant Reformers and their successors. It will then compare this view with the Catholic understanding of the Covenant. Lastly, it will offer a critique of the Reformed stance of the Covenant, and leave the floor open for a discussion of whether the Church that Christ established is ultimately visible and traceable. This will serve as the focus of our next article on Called to Communion. For now, let us consider what can be said of the Covenant between our great God and man.

I would like to begin this investigation of Covenant theology by citing a document loved (to my knowledge at least) by all Presbyterians. The Westminster Confession of Faith states in precise terms that God’s Covenant is not to be changed in its essence as time passes. Instead, from Adam to the present day, there is a commonality of God’s grace being at the heart of it all. And at that heart there is also a grace which has grown in salvation history. Chapter VII of the Westminster Confession, on “God’s Covenant with Man,” states:

1. The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.

2. The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.

3. Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein He freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in Him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life His Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.

4. This covenant of grace is frequently set forth in Scripture by the name of a testament, in reference to the death of Jesus Christ the Testator, and to the everlasting inheritance, with all things belonging to it, therein bequeathed.

5. This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old Testament.

6. Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: which, though fewer in number, and administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory, yet, in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence, and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the new Testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations.²

Here in the Westminster Confession we have the outline of Covenant theology in distilled form. Unlike other theological schools such as dispensationalism or Schweitzer’s notion of a god whose Covenant evolved with himself, in Covenant theology there is an emphasis on a unity which pervades the history of salvation. Moses did not teach a works-based religion that contrasts with the grace of the gospel; instead, to a Covenant theologian, grace was and is ever-present.

The great 19th century systematic theologian of Princeton University, Charles Hodge, clarified that while there is a fundamental unity of essence in the Covenant of God, there is still a uniqueness to the dispensation of grace after Christ’s death and resurrection, as compared to the time before Our Lord’s incarnation.

Hodge writes as follows:

The gospel dispensation is called new in reference to the Mosaic economy, which was old, and about to vanish away. It is distinguished from the old economy, —

1. In being catholic, confined to no one people, but designed and adapted to all nations and to all classes of men.

2. It is more spiritual, not only in that the types and ceremonies of the Old Testament are done away, but also in that the revelation itself is more inward and spiritual. What was then made known objectively, is now, to a greater extent, written on the heart. (Heb. viii. 8-11.) It is incomparably more clear and explicit in its teachings.

4. It is more purely evangelical. Even the New Testament, as we have seen, contains a legal element, it reveals the law still as a covenant of works binding on those who reject the gospel; but in the New Testament the gospel greatly predominates over the law. Whereas, under the Old Testament, the law predominated over the gospel.

5. The Christian economy is specially the dispensation of the Spirit. The great blessing promised of old, as consequent on the coming of Christ, was the effusion of the Spirit on all flesh, i.e., on all nations and on all classes of men. This was so distinguishing a characteristic of the Messianic period that the evangelist says, “The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” (John vii. 39.) Our Lord promised that after his death and ascension He would send the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, to abide with his people, to guide them into the knowledge of the truth, and to convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come. He charged the Apostles to remain at Jerusalem until they had received this power from on high. And in explanation of the events of the day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter said, “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.” (Acts ii. 32, 33.)

6. The old dispensation was temporary and preparatory; the new is permanent and final. In sending forth his disciples to preach the gospel, and in promising them the gift of the Spirit, He assured them that He would be with them in that work unto the end of the world. This dispensation is, therefore, the last before the restoration of all things; the last, that is, designed for the conversion of men and the ingathering of the elect. Afterwards comes the end; the resurrection and the final judgment. In the Old Testament there are frequent intimations of another and a better economy, to which the Mosaic institutions were merely preparatory. But we have no intimation in Scripture that the dispensation of the Spirit is to give way for a new and better dispensation for the conversion of the nations. When the gospel is fully preached, then comes the end.³

Here the increase of grace that came through Christ is shown to be more quantitative than qualitative. More grace is now given to more people in a deeper manner. Christ’s sacrifice was foreshadowed in the Old Covenant, and the way we live today has a connection to the way people have always lived throughout history. As such, when one who loves Covenant Theology considers the older dispensation, the fact that circumcision was performed upon an “unwilling” baby leads the mind to have no qualms with the idea of baptism being given to the Covenant children of believing parents. And it would appear that the Apostle Paul argues in a similar fashion when he states:

In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not administered by hand, by stripping off the carnal body, with the circumcision of Christ. You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. ⁴

Going to other words of Scripture, we find, if anything, even more reasons to be excited about God’s Covenant. Not only is the Covenant chronologically new, it is something which enters one’s heart more deeply, and will lead to a state where “all” shall know the Lord. As the years pass, mankind’s grasp of the goodness of God is to grow in its extent and depth. Depending on one’s eschatological school, this could mean several things at several times and locations, but the general sketch is the same. Scripture states:

But he finds fault with them and says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will conclude a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they did not stand by my covenant and I ignored them, says the Lord.
But this is the covenant I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their minds and I will write them upon their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach, each one his fellow citizen and kinsman, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know me, from least to greatest.
For I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sins no more.”
When he speaks of a “new” covenant, he declares the first one obsolete. And what has become obsolete and has grown old is close to disappearing. ⁵

The glory of the Covenant inspired a sense of awe and wonder in the great Reformed writers. What Christ established is not only greater than the Old Covenant, it is more permanent. Not only is it more permanent, the sense we have is that the Covenant will be even more broad in the extent of its being followed. Jonathan Edwards, while congregationalist in his ecclesiology, grasped this when he wrote in A History of Redemption:

We may observe its continuance, signified here by two expressions; for ever, and from generation to generation. The latter seems to be explanatory of the former. The phrase for ever, is variously used in Scripture. Sometimes thereby is meant as long as a man lives. It is said, that the servant who had his ear bored through with an awl to the door of his master should be his for ever. Sometimes thereby is meant during the continuance of the Jewish state. Of many of the ceremonial and Levitical laws it is said, that they should be statutes for ever. Sometimes it means as long as the world shall stand, or to the end of the generations of men. Thus, Eccles. i. 4. “One generation passeth away, and another cometh; but the earth abideth for ever.” Sometimes thereby is meant to all eternity. So it is said, “God is blessed for ever,” Rom. i. 25. And so it is said, John vi. 51. “If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.“—And which of these senses is here to be understood, the next words determine, viz. to the end of the world, or to the end of the generations of men. It is said in the next words, “and my salvation from generation to generation.“ Isa li. 8. Indeed the fruits of God’s salvation shall remain after the end of the world, as appears in “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner, but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.” Isa li. 6. But the work of salvation itself toward the church shall continue to be wrought till then: till the end of the world God will go on to accomplish deliverance and salvation for the church, from all her enemies; for that is what the prophet is here speaking of. Till the end of the world; till her enemies cease to be, as to any power to molest the church. And this expression from generation to generation, may determine us as to the time which God continues to carry on the work of salvation for his church, both with respect to the beginning and end. It is from generation to generation, i. e. throughout all generations; beginning with the generations of men on the earth, and not ending till these generations end. ⁶

The Covenant was established by Christ, and it will never end as long as people exist. Through every generation, He has been faithful to us. The Church will be delivered from all of her enemies. His Covenant is more stable than the material universe, because his work of salvation for the Church is a more important work than the work of creation itself. In a later part of the same work, Edwards appears to grow in boldness and amazement of God’s Covenant, when he writes:

III. Another great design of God in the work of redemption, was to gather together in one all things in Christ, in heaven and in earth, i. e. all elect creatures; to bring all elect creatures, in heaven and in earth, to an union one to another in one body, under one head, and to unite all together in one body to God the Father. This was begun soon after the fall, and is carried on through all ages, and shall be finished at the end of the world.

IV. God designed by this work to perfect and complete the glory of all the elect by Christ—glory, “such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor has ever entered into the heart of man.” 1 Cor ii. 9 He intended to bring them to perfect excellency and beauty in his holy image, which is the proper beauty of spiritual beings; and to advance them to a glorious degree of honour, and raise them to an ineffable height of pleasure and joy. Thus he designed to glorify the whole church of elect men in soul and body, and with them to bring the glory of the elect angels to its highest elevation under one head.

V. In all this God designed to accomplish the glory of the blessed Trinity in an eminent degree. God had a design of glorifying himself from eternity; yea, to glorify each person in the Godhead. The end must be considered as first in order of nature, and then the means; and therefore we must conceive, that God having professed this end, had then as it were the means to choose; and the principal mean that he adopted was this great work of redemption. It was his design in this work to glorify his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ; and by the Son to glorify the Father: John xiii. 31, 32. “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God also shall glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him.” It was his design that the Son should thus be glorified, and should glorify the Father by what should be accomplished by the Spirit to the glory of the Spirit, that the whole Trinity, conjunctly, and each person singly, might be exceedingly glorified. The work that was the appointed means of this, was begun immediately after the fall, and is carried on till, and finished at, the end of the world, when all this intended glory shall be fully accomplished in all things.⁷

God’s great work of redemption entailed this majestic Covenant–what a joy and hope for the history of the world! The ruin of the fall is to be restored through God’s Covenant with man, all to the praise and glory of the Holy Trinity! It is hard to stay calm while reading these words of Edwards.

To read these and similar words about the Covenant as a Christian struggling with evangelicalism made so much sense out of life on a conceptual level. This is not meant to be a polemic for the postmillenial mindset, which was held by Jonathan Edwards. The Reformed world is indeed mostly amillenial today, and there are those stalwart premillenialist brethren who also inhabit the Reformed trenches. But what should be kept in our consideration is that this is the Reformed view of the Covenant, irrespective of millenial particulars. As we keep this in mind, the question arises: how does the Catholic Church view the Covenant?

This question needs to be answered through a historical analysis, as well as by looking at what the Catholic Church teaches on the Covenant. Historian Jaroslav Pelikan, writing as a Lutheran (but who lived the last eight years of his life Eastern Orthodox), wrote clearly about the various views on the Covenant.

What the first generation of New Englanders had held,” together with their Puritan colleagues in old England, was a system that came to be called “covenant theology” or federal theology. Yet it is important to remember that the theme of “covenant” was one that Roman Catholic theologians also found useful; and before it became the watchword of a theology that was somehow set against Calvinism, the covenant of grace, and God’s declared ends in the appointment and constitution of things in that covenant was, for orthodox Calvinism as it was to be again for Edwards, an authentic way of describing the will of God for the world, a way that took its place within the context of the doctrine of election in the total body of Reformed teaching.⁸

The Reformed view of the Covenant has its own parallels and uniqueness among Roman Catholic theologians? It was useful to them? But wasn’t their faith one of empty rituals? Wasn’t the claim of Rome that we must work our way to God? I asked myself these kinds of questions when I first took the claims of Rome seriously. To get beyond the Reformed attacks on Rome, one must turn to a primary source, and not to caricatures or emphases upon those poor examples who admittedly tarnished the Church’s reputation. Let’s read from Article I of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, on the Revelation of God, for guidance on the Catholic Church’s stance.

I. GOD REVEALS HIS “PLAN OF LOVING GOODNESS”

51. “It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will. His will was that men should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature.”

52. God, who “dwells in unapproachable light”, wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his sons in his only-begotten Son. By revealing himself God wishes to make them capable of responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity.

53. The divine plan of Revelation is realized simultaneously “by deeds and words which are intrinsically bound up with each other” and shed light on each another. It involves a specific divine pedagogy: God communicates himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome by stages the supernatural Revelation that is to culminate in the person and mission of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons repeatedly speaks of this divine pedagogy using the image of God and man becoming accustomed to one another: The Word of God dwelt in man and became the Son of man in order to accustom man to perceive God and to accustom God to dwell in man, according to the Father’s pleasure.

II. THE STAGES OF REVELATION
In the beginning God makes himself known

54. “God, who creates and conserves all things by his Word, provides men with constant evidence of himself in created realities. And furthermore, wishing to open up the way to heavenly salvation–he manifested himself to our first parents from the very beginning.” He invited them to intimate communion with himself and clothed them with resplendent grace and justice.

55. This revelation was not broken off by our first parents’ sin. “After the fall, [God] buoyed them up with the hope of salvation, by promising redemption; and he has never ceased to show his solicitude for the human race. For he wishes to give eternal life to all those who seek salvation by patience in well-doing.”

Even when he disobeyed you and lost your friendship you did not abandon him to the power of death. . . Again and again you offered a covenant to man.⁹

Later in the catechism, we read this statement on the culmination of the Covenant.

III. CHRIST JESUS — “MEDIATOR AND FULLNESS OF ALL REVELATION”

God has said everything in his Word

65. “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father’s one, perfect and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one. St. John of the Cross, among others, commented strikingly on Hebrews 1:1-2:

In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word–and he has no more to say. . . because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.

There will be no further Revelation

66. “The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.¹⁰

In considering the Catechism of the Catholic Church, there are, of course, differences between it and my former stance as a Reformed believer. The same could be said, however, about a comparison between my particular views on the Covenant versus the views of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, John Calvin, or the Westminster divines. What is crucial to keep in mind is that the concept of Covenant has the same fundamental importance to Catholics, and it has the same view of the source of all blessings–our Blessed Lord. Indeed, there is a place for the Catholic to show his love and appreciation for God’s Covenant, and this can be held in unison with one’s consideration of the past, present, and future of the Church. Despite our wanderings and failings as people, God’s faithfulness in the Covenant is unending and undeniable. For the Catholic, there is an unending chain of believers throughout all of Church history, and there are successors to the Apostles in this New Covenant era, just as Joshua succeeded Moses in the Old Covenant times.

But what of the Reformed view of its historical predecessor, from which the protests of the Protestant Reformation are made? How, according to the Reformers, does the Covenant actually exist or subsist in Catholicism, if at all? To answer this question, consider these words of John Calvin, from his Institutes of the Christian Religion:

Whoever will duly examine and weigh the whole form of ecclesiastical government as now existing in the Papacy, will find that there is no kind of spoliation in which robbers act more licentiously, without law or measure. Certainly all things are so unlike, nay, so opposed to the institution of Christ, have so degenerated from the ancient customs and practices of the Church, are so repugnant to nature and reason, that a greater injury cannot be done to Christ than to use his name in defending this disorderly rule. We (say they) are the pillars of the Church, the priests of religion, the vicegerents of Christ, the heads of the faithful, because the apostolic authority has come to us by succession. As if they were speaking to stocks, they perpetually plume themselves on these absurdities. Whenever they make such boasts, I, in my turn, will ask, What have they in common with the apostles? We are not now treating of some hereditary honour which can come to men while they are asleep, but of the office of preaching, which they so greatly shun. In like manner, when we maintain that their kingdom is the tyranny of Antichrist, they immediately object that their venerable hierarchy has often been extolled by great and holy men, as if the holy fathers, when they commended the ecclesiastical hierarchy or spiritual government handed down to them by the apostles, ever dreamed of that shapeless and dreary chaos where bishoprics are held for the most part by ignorant asses, who do not even know the first and ordinary rudiments of the faith, or occasionally by boys who have just left their nurse; or if any are more learned (this, however, is a rare case), they regard the episcopal office as nothing else than a title of magnificence and splendour; where the rectors of churches no more think of feeding the flock than a cobbler does of ploughing, where all things are so confounded by a confusion worse than that of Babel, that no genuine trace of paternal government is any longer to be seen.¹¹

Despite the greatness of the Covenant, it is clear that the 16th century Catholic Church was not a partaker of this greatness, in the mind of Calvin at least. He considered the practices of the Church of his day to be opposed to the heart of the Covenant which inspired the martyrs whose blood was the seed of the Church’s growth, and the Apostles who are Her foundation. It was this striking conflict between a high view of the Covenant that spoke so deeply of the riches of Christ and His Church, and the words of Calvin and others, that led me to wonder about how Covenant theology could be held by one who essentially thought that the Covenant faltered to the point of being unrecognizable, to the point where the Church needed to be re-formed by Luther, Calvin and others.

The words of Scripture that inspired Jonathan Edwards and the like to say that Christ would save men through all time from generation to generation seem not to cover the notion that Christ’s Church would persist through all time, if we are to take Calvin at his word. It reminded me of another man’s struggle with Christianity, written in the United States almost 200 years ago. He wrote as follows:

My mind at times was greatly excited, the cry and tumult were so great and incessant. The Presbyterians were most decided against the Baptists and Methodists, and used all the powers of both reason and sophistry to prove their errors, or, at least, to make the people think they were in error. On the other hand, the Baptists and Methodists in their turn were equally zealous in endeavoring to establish their own tenets and disprove all others.

In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it? . . . I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”¹²

Of course, the one speaking in this instance was not a Reformed scholar. He was definitely not an advocate of Covenant theology. Instead, these words were written by Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, writing in the autobiographical document known as the History of Joseph Smith.

It is undeniable that Smith’s view of the Church (and the Covenant undergirding it) becoming so corrupt fewer than 300 years after the Reformation is remarkably similar to Luther’s and Calvin’s view of the Church roughly 1500 years after Her birth. The idea that there was no place to go to worship God would mean that whatever the Covenant accomplishes, it does not provide us with a sure grasp of how or where to worship. Because this view is rejected by Catholics, it would seem that Catholicism actually has a higher view of the Covenant. In fact, when the data of Scripture are compared to history, the Catholic can say something that cannot be said by the Reformed person (or the Mormon)–the Covenant is so powerful that the Church will not be lost in the passage of time. The “Dark Ages,” with all of their flaws, were not ages without the Covenant. The 16th century was not an age in which “no genuine trace of paternal government” could be found, as Calvin said in the quotation above. Instead, to the Catholic, the words of Hebrews have a tangible application to all of history– “And they shall not teach, each one his fellow citizen and kinsman, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know me, from least to greatest. For I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sins no more.¹³

Of course, objections will arise: perhaps the Covenant was never meant to be manifested in a visible kingdom? Perhaps there were only a very small minority who believed as Calvin did in the 1500 or so years prior to the Reformation? Is this talk of the Covenant and the Catholic Church all Pollyanna-esque thinking? To answer these questions rightly, we need to consider whether the Church is ultimately both visible and invisible, or whether the Church is merely ultimately invisible. This will be the focus of my next article on Called to Communion.

1. John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII (1624).
2. Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. VII.
3. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3.2.7 (1873).
4. Colossians 2:11-12.
5. Hebrews 8:8-13.
6. Jonathan Edwards, The History of the Work of Redemption, available here.
7. Id.
8. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 4, 240 (1985) (quotations omitted).
9. Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) (footnotes omitted).
10. Id. (footnotes omitted).
11. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.5.13.
12. Joseph Smith, History of Joseph Smith, available here.
13. Hebrews 8:11-12.

Tim Troutman’s paper and Jonathan Deane’s recent post have inspired me to say something about one of my own “salient moments” on the road from Geneva to Rome.  So, if you’ll indulge me a little (indubitably utterly fascinating) autobiography, here goes.

From Antho- to Theocentrism

Not so long ago, I believed that Calvinism was equivalent to Protestant Orthodoxy (which was to say, equivalent to the Biblical faith).  It was exquisitely systematic and it had an answer for everything.  But the context in which I began to grow in this faith was very individualistic and human-centered, and the influence of this context on my thinking caused me to overlook some of the most beautiful and deeply Christian aspects of classical Calvinism.

I was thinking of Calvinism as a system explaining, in rigorous detail, how it was that individual folks came to be saved from their sins so that they could go to heaven when they died.  I thought that this was pretty much all there was to the Gospel – not that I didn’t think it was glorious – and I thought that it happened in precisely the way Calvin said it did, so far as I understood him.

Further reflection suggested that I was missing something about the faith.  For one thing, the whole point of creation couldn’t simply consist in the salvation of us sinners.  It wasn’t that I thought our salvation should just be ignored; I didn’t and don’t think that.  But if there was some overarching point or purpose to it all, in some sense it had to be fundamentally about God, the author of it all.¹ This is of course the conclusion towards which Calvinism tends, and I was delighted to discover this robustly theocentric theme expounded powerfully in the works of Jonathan Edwards and (following him) John Piper.²

Edwards on Glory and Felicity as the Ends of Creation

The genius of the thing was that Edwards had a way of explaining how the glory of God – which had to be the ultimate purpose of creation – was intertwined or “tied up” with His redemptive activity, because God’s glory on the one hand, and our salvation and happiness on the other, were really just two sides of the same coin.

This idea that God’s glory and our happiness fit together hand-in-glove was particularly eye-opening to me.  For before discovering this way of looking at things, I had been a little worried that if God was really only concerned about glorifying Himself – if He was just “looking out for number one,” so to speak – then it seemed as though He couldn’t be much concerned about us mere humans at all.  To be sure, maybe He cared about us in a certain sense, since He might want to use us as tools or instruments in His Big Self-Glorification Project.  But this was a little dissatisfying.  After all, if we were simply getting used like tools or mere “means to God’s ends” it wasn’t easy to see how God could love us as individual persons, as “ends in ourselves,” who genuinely mattered to Him as well.  But God is love.  So how could that be?

Yet Edwards had the right sort of answer to this apparent dilemma.  God’s pursuit of His own glory did not conflict with His fatherly concern for human creatures, after all.  It wasn’t something that had to be superadded to or somehow reconciled with His unselfish love, expressed in His yearning desire to rescue and make us forever blessed.  For, as John Piper cleverly formulated it, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”³

According to Edwards (and Piper) it was precisely in our recognizing and celebrating God’s supreme worth, in adoring and enjoying Him, in responding to His grace in love and trust, that God was genuinely glorified in us.  That was how He sought His own glory in and through us: by sharing His life and goodness with us, and thereby making us happy in Him.  And since that is the highest happiness any human creature could possibly attain, God’s unwavering pursuit of His own glory just was His unfailing pursuit of our happiness.  Thus Edwards:

And with respect to God’s being glorified in those perfections wherein his glory consists, expressed in their corresponding effects,-as his wisdom, in wise designs and well-contrived works, his power, in great effects, his justice, in acts of righteousness, his goodness, in communicating happiness,-this does not argue that his pleasure is not in himself, and his own glory; but the contrary. It is the necessary consequence of his delighting in the glory of his nature, that he delights in the emanation and effulgence of it…

From what has been said, it appears, that the pleasure God hath in those things which have been mentioned, is rather a pleasure in diffusing and communicating to, than in receiving from, the creature. Surely, it is no argument of indigence in God that he is inclined to communicate of his infinite fullness. It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain, that it is inclined to overflow …

[However,] God and the creature, in the emanation of the divine fullness, are not properly set in opposition; or made the opposite parts of a disjunction. Nor ought God’s glory and the creature’s good, to be viewed as if they were properly and entirely distinct, in the objection. This supposeth, that God having respect to his glory, and the communication of good to his creatures, are things altogether different: that God communicating his fullness for himself, and his doing it for them, are things standing in a proper disjunction and opposition. Whereas, if we were capable of more perfect views of God and divine things, which are so much above us, it probably would appear very clear, that the matter is quite otherwise: and that these things, instead of appearing entirely distinct, are implied one in the other. God is seeking his glory, seeks the good of his creatures; because the emanation of his glory (which he seeks and delights in, as he delights in himself and his own eternal glory) implies the communicated excellency and happiness of his creatures. And in communicating his fullness for them, he does it for himself; because their good, which he seeks, is so much in union and communion with himself. God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing, but the emanation and expression of God’s glory: God, in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself: and in seeking himself, i.e. himself diffused and expressed, (which he delights in, as he delights in his own beauty and fullness,) he seeks their glory and happiness.⁴

In this discovery I found what I took to be two more major points in favor of Calvinism.  Not only did this perspective explain how God’s seemingly different aims (His glory, our happiness) fit together, but it also firmly grounded what I thought of as a specifically Protestant ethic.  Over against the Catholics, we didn’t believe in works-righteousness.  We knew salvation was a free gift from God.  But we also knew we had to do good works – not to “get saved” but because “we were saved.”  Well, one asks, what motivates us to do the works if we’re already saved?  Why bother?  Easy: we can say that we’re obeying God because we want to be happy and because we want to glorify Him (these things being all of a piece).  And in responding this way, we didn’t put ourselves in the ridiculously backward position of affirming that all our “merit” places God under some sort of obligation to pay us back with accolade and reward – so that “all glory, laud and honor” ultimately went to us instead of Him.

From Edwards to Irenaeus: gloria Dei vivens homo vita autem hominis visio Dei

Of course, if I had actually read any Catholic literature at the time, I would have realized that they’d beaten Edwards to the punch.  I would have seen then that the Catechism of the Catholic Church says just what the Westminster Catechism says about our “chief end,” and quite as insistently.  “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever,” says the Calvinist.  And the Catholic, for his part, insists that

Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: “The world was made for the glory of God.” St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things “not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and communicate it,” for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: “Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand…”

The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created.  God made us “to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace,” for “the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man’s life is the vision of God: if God’s revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word’s manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God.”  The ultimate purpose of creation is that God “who is the creator of all things may at last become ‘all in all,’ thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our beatitude.” ⁵

That wonderful little sentence up there, taken from St. Irenaeus’s Against Heresies (2^nd century), says it all.  “The glory of God is man fully alive,” and “man’s life is the vision of God.”  In other words, God glorifies Himself in us by making us fully alive in Christ; and being made fully alive in Christ – which ultimately leads to eternal happiness in the heavenly “vision of God” – is exactly what God built us for in the first place: “Thou madest us for Thyself,” said St. Augustine, “and our hearts are restless until they find repose in Thee.”⁶ Thus when God relentlessly pursues His own glory in us, He is at the same time relentlessly pursuing our own happiness, our own heart’s rest in Him.  And that, of course, is how God manages to “simultaneously assure His own glory and our beatitude.”

Neat little package, no?  Nice and clean.

The Logic of Glory, the Logic of Grace

So it turned out that Edwards’ general solution went way back, that it flooded beyond the confines of the Calvinist stream right into the Catholic river.  But what of the bit about Protestant ethics?  Isn’t it here that the Catholic must pull back, and must hold that since our “merit” before God is the thing that saves us, the glory for our salvation cannot really go to God but must somehow go to us?

Not so much.  To be sure, Catholics do say with St. Augustine (and for that matter with Scripture) that God will crown us, will reward us for our obedience, and all the rest.  But they also say with St. Augustine (and for that matter with Scripture) that when God crowns these things, He’s doing nothing more than crowing His own gracious work in us.  “Grace is for grace, as if remuneration for righteousness,” says St. Augustine, “in order that it may be true, because it is true, that ‘God shall reward every man according to his works.’”⁷

In other words, God not only graciously works the good in us (“for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” Eph. 2:10) but, as if that weren’t quite enough of a gift, He also rewards and glorifies us for those good works (“for those whom He called He justified, and those whom He justified, He also glorified,” Rom. 8:30)

So this was a “salient moment” for me, an important recognition that allowed me to understand what the Catholics had been getting at.  From a Catholic perspective, it is entirely in keeping with the impetus behind soli deo gloria to recognize that God not only liberally distributes His glory to creatures, but also that the creaturely pursuit of such glory is a thoroughly Christian activity, and is therefore entirely in keeping with the Gospel of grace.  Here of course we have to be careful; for naturally, we must never seek to exalt ourselves, or else we’ll be humbled.  And Catholics know that.  But it most certainly does not follow from this fact that God wants to withhold glory from everybody else, or to stop us from pursuing it; and to assume that He does is unwittingly to cut the Gospel off at its knees.

For consider, Jesus glorifies the Father, as we know, but in so doing He teaches us the crucial lesson that “If I glorify myself, My glory is nothing.  It is My Father who glorifies Me” (Jn 8:54).  Yet the Son brings us into precisely this filial relationship with the Father, which He won for us through His life, death and resurrection.  Now we are in a position to cry Abba, Father; now we too get to share in the life of God, by Christ and through the Spirit.  And just as the Father shares His life and love with the Son, and thereby glorifies Him, so too with us: for we who are brought into God’s family are ourselves “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18).  Thus “to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, He will give eternal life” (Rom 2:7) – that is to say, “the eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor 4:17).

In all this, strikingly, the Apostle Paul is commending the pursuit of “glory,” the hope of being transformed gloriously ourselves, and so forth.  Yet this does not conflict with “all glory laud and honor” going to God, according to the Church, because the “grace” that “extends to more and more,” which “increases thanksgiving to the glory of God,” is given precisely “for our sakes” in the first place (2 Cor 4:15).  After all, Jesus “earned” absolutely nothing for Himself that He didn’t already possess prior to becoming man.  He did not become incarnate, suffer and die in order to get something He lacked, or to receive something more for Himself.  He did it for us men and for our salvation.  He did it, not to reassert in front of everyone that all of creation belongs to Him, but to raise us up to live and love like Him, and share in His glory and rulership. That is why Scripture spends so much time talking about God’s glory on the one hand, but also our “rewards” and “crowns” and so forth on the other.

It’s a simple but staggering thought.  And like most simple ideas, it seems fairly obvious in retrospect.  As St. Bonaventure pointed out, God did not go to all the trouble of creating a universe and redeeming us in order to increase His glory – for how exactly is creating the universe supposed to make His glory any “bigger?”  Rather, He went to all the trouble of creation and redemption to communicate His glory, to share it with us, for “God has no other reason for creating than His love and goodness.”

It took a little while for me to put these pieces together.  But when I finally started to think through all this with fresh eyes, it became clear to me that I had fallen into the understandable mistake of thinking that if all the glory goes to God – which is most certainly true – then it must mean that no glory goes to anybody or anything else – which is most certainly false.  When God “crowns our merit,” as St. Augustine says, He crowns nothing but His own gifts.  But He cannot very well do that without crowning us.  And when God calls us for His own glory, and justifies us for His own glory, He glorifies us for us own glory as well.  But it would be a little tricky, even for God, to accomplish all that unless He really did end up glorifying us after all.  Yet this doesn’t mean any less glory goes to God.  The Lord simply isn’t in the business of playing tug of war with His creation; He hasn’t got anything to prove, and that’s not how the logic of glory (or the Gospel of grace) works.

Thus to glory in God’s works – including the works of our salvation, our sanctification and all the rest – is to glory in God.⁸ It is to glory in God for being the sort of God He is: glorious enough to share His glory, rich enough to afford a little liberality, and full enough of goodness to let His goodness overflow.

What thanks ought we to render to Almighty God my dear brethren, that He has made us what we are!  It is a matter of grace.  There are, to be sure, many cogent arguments to lead one to join the Catholic Church, but they do not force the will.  We may know them, and not be moved by them to act upon them.  We may be convinced without being persuaded.  The two things are quite distinct from each other, seeing you ought to believe, and believing; reason, if left to itself, will bring you to the conclusion that you have sufficient grounds for believing, but belief is a gift of grace.  You are then what you are, not from any excellence or merit of your own, but by the grace of God who has chosen you to believe.  You might have been as the barbarians of Africa, or the freethinker of Europe, with grace sufficient to condemn you, because it had not furthered your salvation.  You might have had strong inspirations of grace and have resisted them, and then additional grace might not have been given to overcome your resistance.  God gives not the same measure of grace to all.  Has He not visited you with over-abundant grace?  And was it not necessary for your hard hearts to receive more than other people?  Praise and bless Him continually for the benefit; do not forget, as time goes on, that it is of grace; do not pride yourselves upon it; pray ever not to lose it; and do your best to make others partakers of it.

And you brethren, also, if such be present, who are not as yet Catholics, but who by your coming hither seem to show your interest in our teaching, and you wish to know more about it, you too remember, that though you may not yet have faith in the Church, still God has brought you into the way of obtaining it.  You are under the influence of His grace; He has brought you a step on your journey; He wishes to bring you further.  He wishes to bestow on you the fullness of His blessings, and to make you Catholics … Yet now the first suggestions of grace are working in your souls, and are issuing in pardon for the past and sanctity for the future.  God is moving you to acts of faith, hope, love, hatred of sin, repentance; do not disappoint Him, do not thwart Him, concur with Him, obey Him.  You look up, and you see, as it were, a great mountain to be scaled; you say, “How can I possibly find a path over these giant obstacles, which I find in the way of my becoming Catholic?  I do not comprehend this doctrine, and I am pained at that; a third seems impossible; I never can be familiar with one practice, I am afraid of another; it is one maze and discomfort to me, and I am led to sink down in despair.”  Say not so, my dear brethren, look up in hope, trust in Him who calls you forward.  “Who art thou, O great mountain, before Zorobabel? but a plain.”  He will lead you forward step by step, as He has led forward many a one before you. – John Cardinal Newman, “Faith and Private Judgment“

1. “For My own sake, for My own sake, I do it, for how should My name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another,” Is. 48:11.
2. See Piper’s God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards, Crossway Books (1998), and Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, Multnomah (1996).
3. Desiring God, p. 50.
4. “Dissertation on the End for which God Created the World,” sec. IV.
5. CCC 293-294.
6. St. Augustine, Confessions, I.
7. St. Augustine, On Grace and Free Will, 20.
8. Compare: wouldn’t it be weird if someone complained, after singing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” on some Sunday morning, that this hymn was spending too much time glorifying the sun, stars, and seasons, all to the detriment of glorifying God? The person who makes this complaint doesn’t “get” “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” This is something like how Catholics hear the complaint that they are making too much of the saints or the Blessed Virgin or what have you; it manifests a kind of confusion about the logic of glory and grace.

Contents:

I. How Soli Deo Gloria and Sola Gratia are Related
II. Will God’s Glory be Shared?

I. How Soli Deo Gloria and Sola Gratia Are Related

1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.13.2.
2. Ibid.
3. Luke 18:9-14.
4. John Calvin, Commentaries on Matthew, Mark, Luke, Luke 18:9-14.
5. Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 1996.
6. CCC 2003
7. Protestant scholar Alister McGrath openly admits as much, saying, “it will be clear that the medieval period was astonishingly faithful to the teaching of Augustine on the question of the nature of justification, where the Reformers departed from it,” and later, “The Reformation understanding of the nature of justification – as opposed to its mode – must therefore be regarded as a genuine theological novum.” Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 1.185-187 (1986) (emphasis in original), available here.
8. 1 John 4:8.
9. John Calvin, Institutes, 3.13.2.
10. Matthew 22:38-40.
11. See, e.g., Book of Church Order of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Directory for the Public Worship of God, ch. 2.9. On the other hand, the Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church in America, Appendix F, in what is a wonderful prayer for the dedication of a church building, says: “We give thanks unto You for Your infinite mercies to us, and, in particular, for the gift of Your Son to be our Saviour. We praise You for the Church of God, of which He is the only Head and King and of which we are humble and unfaithful members. We acknowledge that we are not worthy to receive from Your hand the blessings of Your common grace; and especially do we recognize the abundance of Your great goodness in granting to us, through Your particular grace, membership in the Church Universal, the mystical Body of Christ.” If the liturgies in question made consistent use of prayers like this, it might refute my point.
12. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, 139-140.
13. CCC 1993.
14. CCC 604
15. Romans 5:8.
16. Ephesians 2:1.
17. John Calvin, Institutes, 3.15.3.
18. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2.114.1.
19. Exodus 16:6-7.
20. Deuteronomy 7:7-8.
21. In addition to the quotes given, see also: 1 Corinthians 2:7; 2 Corinthians 4:17; Colossians 3:4 (“glory” here should not be read as synonymous with “Heaven”); 2 Timothy 2:10; Hebrews 2:10; 1 Peter 5:1-4.
22. Romans 8:17 (RSV). NIV says “share in His glory.”
23. 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14 (RSV). Likewise, the NIV translation says, “share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
24. Deuteronomy 7:7-8.
25. Romans 3:20.
26. Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23, 14:27.
27. John 17:22.
28. That there is a unique glory had only by God as the ultimate source and end of creatures, a glory not shared by God, can be seen in Isaiah 42:8 and 48:11.
29. Fanny Crosby, To God Be the Glory.