Samuel Rutherford (1600 - 1661) was a Scotch Covenanter that wrote several classic works of Presbyterian polity many of which are available on-line or via your favorite online rare-bookseller. But One book that has curiously not made it back into print is The Covenant of Life Opened, Or, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace, Edinburgh: Andre Anderson, 1654. This would be is a helpful book indeed to bring back into reprint either facsimile or re-typeset. The main parts are pictured in the pic on the left of this title page.

Addendum: You can find a copy here at Reformation Heritage Books! How silly of me … I should have checked with my publisher first … (Thanks Marty!!) Added to RHB’s catalog on Monday 07 August, 2006.

This is a fascinating piece as Rutherford walks closely through the nature of the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace. I will be reading through this work over the next couple of weeks for fun (it’s only 200 pages) and as I bump something that strikes me as interesting I will be sure to post it here. In the meantime, here are points in the table of contents that caught my eye: (more…)

Can you guess what I’ve been reading? (amended 5 pm)

The Torrance trajectory: (Foedus or Pactum?)
* J. B. Torrance “The Concept of Federal Theology - Was Calvin a Federal Theologian?” in Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor, ed. de Jonge.
* J. B. Torrance Covenant or Contract? Scottish Journal of Theology, 23: 1970, p. 51-76.
* T. F. Torrance - Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell. T & T Clark.

If you have read anything from the Torrance brothers (James and Thomas) on this question over the past 40 years, you know this line of thought. It’s either covenant or contract. In very rough form Calvin was great. Beza wasn’t. The problem is that Beza gutted Calvin and made Calvinism the mean, cold, predestinarian system it is today- word’s like bilateral contract are employed.  Bilateral being a contract quid pro quo. This is contrasted with a warm gracious unconditional arrangement characterized as a unilateral covenant, a marriage as it were. In this line of thinking it is the bilateral view of covenant that causes the problems.

The Miller trajectory: (Miller, Trinterud, Møller, Baker et al …)
Down another trajectory, others have variously argued that in fact it is the unilateral view that is the problem. Geneva vs. Zurich or the Rhineland. Calvin vs. Bullinger. In this construct unilateral  covenants tend towards predestination and cause problems. In this line it is the bilateral covenant theology that is  what was corrupted by the Genevan predestinarianism of Calvin and Beza.

The Ramist vs Aristotelian trajectory:
Still others, in a different trajectory (Letham for instance in “Foedus Operum,” Sixteenth Century Journal, Winter 1983), maintains that the development of the covenant of works idea/theology is really the theological embodiment of the philosophical struggle between Aristotelian and Ramist logic. The claim is that Heidelberg and Cambridge were major centers of Ramism (p. 465). 

Without getting into deep weeds quickly, a few cursory musings …
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