November 2007 - Protestant Reformed Churches in America

Protestant Reformed Theological Journal
Peter Lillback, in a detailed treatment of Calvin’s conception
of the covenant, notes that he also uses the words “oracles,” “way,”
and “fellowship” as synonyms for the covenant. 5 In connection
with the last of these terms (“fellowship”), Lillback rightly quotes
the first three sentences of that section of the Institutes (book 2,
chapters 10 and 11) in which Calvin most fully treats the covenant:
Now we can clearly see from what has already been said that all men
adopted by God into the company of his people since the beginning
of the world were covenanted to him by the same law and by the
bond of the same doctrine as obtains among us. It is very important
to make this point. Accordingly I shall add, by way of appendix, how
far the condition of the patriarchs in this fellowship differed from
ours, even though they participated in the same inheritance and hoped
for a common salvation with us by the grace of the same Mediator
(2.10.1, pp. 428-429).
After further references to the “Mediator,” “inheritance,”
“grace,” “mercy” and “peace,” etc., of God’s “spiritual” covenant
in Calvin’s writings, Lillback concludes,
... the essence of Calvin’s conception of the covenant is the notion of
Moshe Weinfeld, “berith,” Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament,
vol. 2, eds. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, trans. John T.
Willis [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975], pp. 253-255; Gottfried Quell,
“diatheke,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 2, ed.
Gerhard Kittel, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1964], pp. 107-108; Johannes Behm, “diatheke,” Ibid., p. 134). The biblical
lexicons of Calvin’s day also let him down, when he mistakenly
stated in his Institutes, “the word ‘baptize’ [baptizein] means to immerse”
(4.15.19, p. 1320). See the thorough treatment of the Greek word
baptizein in James W. Dale’s four volumes: Classic Baptism, Judaic
Baptism, Johannic Baptism, and Christic Baptism and Patristic Baptism.
5. Peter A. Lillback, The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development
of Covenant Theology (Baker: Grand Rapids, 2001), p. 134,
n. 30.
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Vol. 41, No. 1