There is a wonderful series of stories published by G.K. Chesterton that have to do with a Roman Catholic priest in England who solves mainly murder mysteries. His name is Father Brown. It is a series that I highly recommend and has been published in its entirety by Penguin Books in the past. Unlike Sherlock Holmes, Fr. Brown does not solve criminal mysteries by deduction, but rather by knowing human beings. In fact, in the story cited above, Fr. Brown makes the following comment:
“You see, I had murdered them all myself…. I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully. I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.”
In one of his stories, when the detective asks him how he knew the criminal, he answers the detective by saying that he had murdered the person. The startled detective is unsure whether to arrest him or not. But, then, Fr. Brown quickly explains as above.
You see, Fr. Brown knew the sin that indwells us all. As St. Paul points out, in Adam we are all one. That is, we are one with him in our sin. And, as C.S. Lewis points out, evil is ultimately boring. Evil is not creative, rather, it tries the same tactics century after century. Evil is not creative, it simply corrupts that which is good. And, so, given the lack of creativity in evil, it was only necessary for Fr. Brown to look within himself to solve his mysteries, for what he found in himself was the same thing that was present in every one of the criminals he pursued.
This is the converse of what I mentioned in my previous post on our Lord and being in mystical union with Him. No, we are not in the same mystical union with Adam as we are with our Lord Jesus Christ. We have true mystical union with Christ, while we have only a union of likeness and fallen nature with Adam. Nevertheless, we identify with Adam in our sin while we are united with Christ in His victory. We share in the sin of Adam and we are graven into Christ’s righteousness.
We are not united with Adam in covenant. We are united with Adam in likeness and fallen nature. But, we do have a covenant with our Lord. We participate in that covenant which our Lord has with His Father. It is the second covenant, a true gift, but a gift that has real rights, responsibilities, and duties. And so St. Paul can say:
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Now you are sounding Reformed as in Calvinist. They talk about this covenant that way. The only covenant we have with God as Christians, is not a mere covenant, but Christ’s last will and Testament, the New Testament in his Blood. Through the New Testament in His blood, we inherit (that is what a will or Testament is for) the forgiveness of sins. We inherit it, we don’t earn it. We receive it. Heirs don’t have to do anything to receive their inheritance.
Father – here’s some free Chesterton audio books and I note there are some of the Father Brown books in there as well.
I rather like the Patristic understanding of Human Nature as being one (a la our reading in Clement), thus as Adam derailed all of us, Christ sets us back on track. But each of us has the potential to be, on a smaller scale, Adam or Christ all over again – my sin weakens you as your good deeds restore me.
I don’t know about the language of “Covenant”, however – it seems by the time the Jewish tradition grew out into the wider Gentile world our understanding was different.
This series yielded, amongst others, one of my favourite quotes. Context – Fr Brown is commenting about the rising tide of ideas flowing from Nietzsche – the will to power and all that: “It is damned nonsense, but more than that, it is nonsense that can damn.”
More than one author has mentioned that the roots of covenant thinking are to be found in Judaism by way of the Early Church Fathers, for instance, Daniel J. Elazar of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, who develops the idea that the concept we have of government as a covenant with the people comes out of Judaism through those Fathers.
However, my personal argument comes out of another source. Look at the word sacrament. It comes out of sacramentum, the Latin word used for the oath (the covenant) that a soldier made with the Empire when he became a Roman soldier. When the Church chose a word to express what the mysteries were, it chose a word that signified a covenant. Eventually, even the East has adopted that type of language in many of its writings.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that covenant theology, as a formal field, comes from the 17th century going into the 18th.
Having said that, there are Orthodox writers, such as Dr. Joseph Allen, who have availed themselves of the language of covenant theology in order to express some quite Orthodox concepts. I first learned covenant theology in a non-Calvinist seminary. And, theological writers such as George Eldon Ladd, who is not necessarily Calvinist also uses it. I hope that it is not being argued that only Calvinists are allowed to use covenant language!
Bror, I doubt there is any way I can convince you that anyone who does not believe in “once saved always saved” need not necessarily believe that works earn our justification. What I have pointed out is that there are sufficient verses from St. Paul, himself (as well as Jesus, St. James, St. John, etc.), that link our post-conversion behavior and judgment to put “once saved always saved” in doubt.
Furthermore, I also argue that works are not simply a spontaneous “happening” as though we were still in the 1960’s but can be part of a plan to deliberately discipline our flesh into obedience to Christ. I have also pointed out that the Holy Spirit is involved in the whole effort.
If you chose to insist that any position but “once saved always saved” automatically means trying to earn our salvation by works, then there is little I can do to convince you otherwise. Do please note that that stance is also held by Methodists who are still Wesleyans, many Anabaptists (but not Baptists), Nazarenes, and Pentecostals. Yet, every one of those denominations argues that justification is by grace through faith.
Fr. Ernesto,
And I have chastised you often in the past for attributing once saved always saved to me as my position. I am not Reformed and do not in any way believe that. But neither do I believe our works are the way we stay in the faith. We begin and end by the work of the spirit.