A Critique of the Covenant of Works in Contemporary Controversy

Protestant Reformed Theological Journal
personal-structural bond which joins the three persons of God in a
community of life, and in which man was created to participate.” The
precise nature, then, of the covenant with Adam was a relationship of
communion and fellowship with God.
In this covenant, God made a promise of life to Adam. Regarding
that life, which Adam could have attained, the men of the FV men are
clear. Jordan says concerning the promise to Adam,
Coming to the Tree of Knowledge, Adam would experience a first kind
of death and glorification.... Full glorification with all the elements
of the world would await the coming of the son of Adam, who would
also be the Son of God the Father. 39
Adam without Christ would have attained to an initial stage of glorification,
and with him the entire human race, merely through obedience
to the probationary command. However, the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, would eventually become incarnate anyway, apart from sin on
the part of Adam, in order to bring Adam and his posterity into the
second stage of maturity—the glorious heavenly life. Jordan believes
that “the incarnation of the Son of God, who would also be the Son
of Adam, was planned all along, apart from sin.” 40
Lusk states the inheritance promised to Adam in the more comprehensive
terms of the gathering together of all things:
God would have eventually given him the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil. This Tree would have represented the bestowal of
kingly office and glory upon Adam. It would have meant a promotion
from earthly dominion to heavenly (1 Corinthians 15:47; cf.
vs. 44, 45 and Ephesians 2:6). It would have meant the dawning of
the new age, the removal of the boundary between heaven and earth
(Genesis 1:6–8), the joining together of heaven and earth (Revelation
21, 22). 41
When Adam had passed his test of obedience to God by not eating of
39 Wilkins, Federal Vision, 187.
40 Ibid., 185.
41 Beisner, Auburn Avenue Theology, 139.
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Vol. 44, No. 2