A Critique of John Colquhoun's The Law and The Gospel (Pt.9)

Section 2: The Law as given to Adam under the Form of the Covenant of Works?

This will be the conclusion of this section of chapter one about the "Moral Law" as "The Law of God in General." Again, we are addressing questions and presuppositional answers to the ideology that Adam was under a covenant of works whereby, according to Colquhoun's own testimony, which says, "It is evident, then, that the promise of life in case of obedience and the denunciation of death in the event of disobedience, annexed to the law of creation, made it to Adam a covenant of works proposed" (pg.26), he earned eternal life through obedience to the covenant. On this presupposition, I continue my objection. Adam was indeed created as the image of this representation of the life of God on behalf of the life of his posterity in this garden around a fellowship with the Almighty and the commandment that guarded that economic life of this unique communion above all the other creatures of God (Ex.7:1-5; Rom.9:17-23). However, Eve's response to the temptation of the serpent doesn't prove "consent" to this condition as a covenant, as John suggests (Gen.3:2-3). Why does John even need to guard consent according to Covenant Theology? Why do we need to allow this question to lead us to believe Adam required consent when he came into the condition of "his" world the same way we came into the condition of "our" world? None of us were born into the world by consent. We were born into the condition of sin apart from our consent, but Adam was born into a condition of innocence in a particular state of grace, also apart from consent. Therefore, a covenant is not required to have life under those conditions (Rom.9:19). It offers no sanity to suggest that "Adam bound himself to perfect obedience as a condition of eternal life" when the temptation was that he could continue to live forever apart from God's restraint to the life of the garden that God cultivated for him when he believed that he could be both wise like God as his equal by testing His Word through living free as gods outside God's presence in the garden judging good and evil apart from God's understanding (pg.27). And in obeying this temptation to make himself wise, how is Adam binding himself "with consent" and "all his posterity after him" to believe whatever is revealed or commanded "afterward" when the first command is tested? How could he consent to what would come afterward if the threat was immediate death? That's some strange logic and an interesting twist of the magic wand! Adam didn't believe he would die, or he would not have tested the restraint, and if he believed he could test the restraint, he made no consent to what would come after. That's a ridiculous idea that he ever intended to bind himself to a covenant of perfect works!

So, there was never a covenant of works based on consent. The conditions were the conditions that Adam was created under through God's own sovereignty, apart from his consent. I agree, however, that his posterity is tied to his choices before and after the effects of the original conditions. Therefore, we are surely without consent in the conditions that we were created in. So again, I have to object to this presupposition that "the law as a form of a covenant of works says to every man who is under it not only 'Do and live' but 'Do or die'; do on pain of death in all its dreadful extent" (pg.25) as an utter contradiction and inconsistency of Adam "consenting to the penal sanction of the first covenant, having bound himself and all his natural posterity (us) never to have eternal life except on the condition of his exclusive perfect obedience; and since he failed in this obedience and so fell with all his natural descendants under the begun execution of the penalty, no sinner under that broken covenant is bound by it to seek eternal life by his own performances" (pg.27). Both these statements can't be true at the same time. Adam's posterity is obligated to keep the law for eternal life, or they are not. I agree with John's latter statement, the penalty of the conditional commandment (what he calls the covenant), that Adam represents his posterity through demands for absolute death, which is why, with the additional revelation of laws that follow, the demand for that death increases (Rom.5:12-21; Gal.3:19, 23). But my objection is that Gentiles are not under the Mosaic covenant as an increased demand for death, which is Scripturely called the first covenant (Heb.8:7), whereby the demand for death increases (Heb.8:13). If the Mosiac Law is called the first covenant, there was no Adamic covenant of consent as proposed here through Covenant Theology. A man is judged for what he knows (Rom.5:12-21; Gen.15:16; Lev.18:24-28), not for what he does not know (Jn.9:36-41), regarding "the law" as a demand for death (Rom.2:1-16; Lk.12:41-48; Jn.12:48; Rom.1:18-21).   

So then, how will the world be judged that does not know the Law? She will be judged by Jesus Christ, the faithful and true witness. It was said to the Jews who knew the Law that "if they labor to escape the death threatened and to procure the life promised to come through it by their own righteousness, their labor is to no purpose but to increase guilt and aggravate their condemnation" (pg.28). Romans 9:30-32 is a terrible proof text for that justification when Romans 2 is clearly and directly speaking to the Jews who knew the Law and possess the oracles of God. The Gentiles, on the other hand, who don't have the Law, will not be judged by the first covenant but by whether or not Christ justifies them through the blood of His covenant. Those outside the new covenant will be judged in the second death according to the light that they did have through creation according to their fathers. Therefore, they only have enough light to damn them (Rom.1:18-32). So then, the Gentiles are not bound to perfection through the Law for eternal life with the same standard of immediate death as a crime against the spirit of the nation but are bound to eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ alone. The moral law, then, is tied to Adam, not by means of a consensual covenant, but by means of the image that represented the likeness of eternal life in the economic liberty of the garden of God, which was lost to his posterity through sin (Rom.5:12-14; 1Cor.15:21-22). The image of the moral law that represents the life of God through the promise was not reinstituted as a covenant in Noah but was preserved and restored in the image of the proper memorial sacrifice as the command (Gen.8:20-9:7). The "sign" of the covenant that was made on behalf of all life in Noah's posterity was not cut through the blood of that sacrifice for the particular man as a ransom (i.e., "And as for you," meaning Noah as the image of the particular redemption) but was set in the sky as a memorial of the justice over the pre-flood creation as the ransom sacrifice for the promise of eternal life to continue in Noah (i.e., "And as for Me," meaning God's promise to withhold justice when Noah fails to perform justice through the blessing of the sacrificial ransom) (Gen.9:25; Pr.21:18; Isa.43:3-4; Jer.31:11). So then, the Gentiles will be judged through the ransom of this promise fulfilled (Matt.20:24-28; Pr..24:15-20).  

Gen.9:4-7 (mast)

Surely, flesh with life still in its blood, you shall not eat. 

(v.5) So indeed, only that (direct) blood (singular) that is for you (plural present) will intercede for your souls. From the power of every beast, I will seek atonement (emphatic); from the strength of that man to the pride of a nation of such a man, I will seek propitiation (direct) for the soul of that type of Adam. 

(v.6) Whoever sheds the blood of that Adam, by an Adam, such a man's blood shall be shed, for in the image of God, He made atonement (direct) by that Adam. 

(v.7) But as for you, be fruitful and multiply . . .