A Critique of the Covenant of Works in Contemporary Controversy

Protestant Reformed Theological Journal
sums up the tradition’s idea of merit: “On condition that Adam gave
perfect obedience he was promised eternal life…which he was to merit
for himself ex pacto (though not ex congruo or ex condigno).” 23
This is also the notion of merit that contemporary theologian
Cornelis Venema supports in his recent defense of the covenant of
works as formulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith:
There is one obvious sense in which the language of “merit” has no
place in a biblical theology of the covenant. At no point in God’s
dealings with man as covenant creature may we say that God, in the
strict sense of justice, owes the creature anything.
The fact is that God has, by entering into covenant with man,
bound himself by the promise and as well the demands/obligations of
that covenant. This means that Adam’s obedience to the probationary
command, though it were an outworking and development within the
covenant communion in which he was placed by God’s prevenient
favor, would nonetheless “merit” or “deserve” the reward of righteousness
God himself had promised. In the covenant itself, God bound
himself to grant, as in some sense a reward well-deserved, the fullness
of covenant fellowship into which Adam was called. 24
23 Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, 294–95.
24 Cornelis Venema, “Recent Criticisms of the ‘Covenant of Works’ in
the Westminster Confession of Faith” Mid-America Journal of Theology 9
(Fall 1993):172. Emphasis is the author’s own. Venema’s article is odd. In
it he purports to defend Westminster’s traditional formulation of the covenant
of works from recent criticism, but promptly defines the covenant as a fellowship,
defends merit, and claims the explicit promise of heavenly life to
Adam, all of which, while part of the developed tradition on the covenant of
works, are not explicitly part of Westminster. In addition, while the article
purports to be a refutation of recent criticisms of the covenant of works, he
never mentions the earliest and weightiest recent criticism of the covenant of
works by Herman Hoeksema. Recently, Rowland Ward engages in historicaltheological
revisionism when he states, “It is very disturbing to see that quite
a number of orthodox writers [current, modern writers] have the notion that
the covenant of works is a merit based arrangement, the reward being wages
earned. But in its formulation of the covenant of works the Reformed tradition
has constantly rejected any such idea” (Rowland S. Ward, God and Adam:
Reformed Theology and the Creation Covenant [Wantirna, Australia: New
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Vol. 44, No. 2