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1689Federalism.com Forum

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The website now has its own dedicated forum. Up until now discussion has taken place in disparate social media locations. This presents an opportunity to centralize discussion and provide an easily searchable archive to find previous discussions. The forum is intended for those who hold to 1689 Federalism and those who want to learn more about it.

https://www.1689federalism.com/forum/index.php

Some people have experienced an error when they click “Register.” The problem may be resolved now, but if you encounter it, first click “Login” then “Register Now” and see if that works instead.

OT Saints Were Saved by the New Covenant (Quotes)

On By brandonadamsIn 1689 federalism, new covenant, theology, Uncategorized3 Comments

Only the New Covenant is the Covenant of Grace. OT saints were saved the same way we are today: by New Covenant union with Christ. This concept is not baptist eisegesis. Here are a variety of quotes affirming this truth (I’ll add to it as I come across more).

Christ can work out of that finished work in the future because it has been decreed and ordained. So the Holy Spirit can be active according to ordo salutis even in advance of the historia salutis pouring out.

Camden Bucey, Christ the Center 700 Redemption Accomplished and Applied


Old Testament believers enjoyed the benefits of union with Christ and His imputed righteousness prior to His earthy ministry. The covenantal-legal agreement of the pactum [i.e., the Covenant of Redemption] was sufficient in and of itself due to the Trinity’s utter trustworthiness to carry out its covenant-oaths. In other words, the stipulations of the pactum, an inherently legal arrangement, are the foundation for the application of redemption in covenant of grace.

J.V. Fesko, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption, 347


[W]hatever spiritual gifts the fathers obtained, they were accidental as it were to their age; for it was necessary for them to direct their eyes to Christ in order to become possessed of them… There is yet no reason why God should not have extended the grace of the new covenant to the fathers. This is the true solution of the question.

Calvin (Commentary Hebrews 8:10)


There are clear passages indicating that ‘the forgiveness of sins’ is unique to the New Covenant (“remember their sins no more”; Jer 31:34)… Kuyper seems to confirm this conclusion. He argued that the energies of the Spirit at Pentecost worked retroactively in the lives of OT saints.

Horton, Rediscovering the Holy Spirit, p152ff (See extended quote here: Horton’s Retroactive New Covenant)


[T]he work of Christ is the source of all human salvation from sin: the salvation of Adam and Eve, of Noah, of Abraham, of Moses, of David, and of all of Godâ’s people in every age, past, present, or future. Everyone who has ever been saved has been saved through the new covenant in Christ. Everyone who is saved receives a new heart, a heart of obedience, through the new covenant work of Christ. So though it is a new covenant, it is also the oldest, the temporal expression of the pactum salutis… The New Covenant does have a temporal inauguration… the shedding of Jesus’ blood, a datable historical event, is the substance of the New Covenant, the Covenant that purifies, not only the flesh, but the conscience, the heart. Nevertheless, as we saw earlier, the efficacy of the New Covenant, unlike that of previous covenants, extends to God’s elect prior to Jesus’ atonement. When believers in the Old Testament experienced “circumcision of the heart,” or when they were Jews “inwardly,” they were partaking of the power of the New Covenant.

John Frame, Systematic Theology, p. 79-81 (See extended quote here John Frame’s Retroactive New Covenant)

[T]he happy persons, who even in that early age [the Old Testament] were by the grace of God taught to understand the distinction now set forth, were thereby made the children of promise, and were accounted in the secret purpose of God as heirs of the New Testament; although they continued with perfect fitness to administer the Old Testament to the ancient people of God.

Augustine, A Work on the Proceedings of Pelagius, 189 (See more quotes here)


These pertain to the new testament [covenant], are the children of promise, and are regenerated by God the Father and a free mother. Of this kind were all the righteous men of old, and Moses himself, the minister of the old testament, the heir of the new . . . Let us, therefore, choose whether to call the righteous men of old the children of the bondwoman or of the free. Be it far from us to say, of the bondwoman; therefore if of the free, they pertain to the new testament [covenant] in the Holy Spirit, whom, as making alive, the apostle opposes to the killing letter. For on what ground do they not belong to the grace of the new testament [covenant]?

Augustine, A Treatise Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, 406-407 (See more quotes here)

Augustine, with great shrewdness remarks, that from the beginning of the world the sons of promise, the divinely regenerated, who, through faith working by love, obeyed the commandments, belonged to the New Testament; entertaining the hope not of carnal, earthly, temporal, but spiritual, heavenly, and eternal blessings, believing especially in a Mediator, by whom they doubted not both that the Spirit was administered to them, enabling them to do good, and pardon imparted as often as they sinned. The thing which he thus intended to assert was, that all the saints mentioned in Scripture, from the beginning of the world, as having been specially selected by God, were equally with us partakers of the blessing of eternal salvation.

Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.11.10


[A]lthough the Old Law contained precepts of charity, nevertheless it did not confer the Holy Ghost…
the New Law is chiefly the grace itself of the Holy Ghost, which is given to those who believe in Christ…
Nevertheless there were some in the state of the Old Testament who, having charity and the grace of the Holy Ghost, looked chiefly to spiritual and eternal promises: and in this respect they belonged to the New Law…
As to those under the Old Testament who through faith were acceptable to God, in this respect they belonged to the New Testament: for they were not justified except through faith in Christ, Who is the Author of the New Testament…
No man ever had the grace of the Holy Ghost except through faith in Christ either explicit or implicit: and by faith in Christ man belongs to the New Testament. Consequently whoever had the law of grace instilled into them belonged to the New Testament… at all times there have been some persons belonging to the New Testament, as stated above.”

Aquinas Summa Theologica I-II, 106-107 (See more here and here)

There were . . . under the regimen of the Old Covenant, people who possessed the charity and grace of the Holy Spirit and longed above all for the spiritual and eternal promises by which they were associated with the New Law… [E]ven though the Old Law prescribed charity, it did not give the Holy Spirit, through whom “God’s charity has been poured into our hearts.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting Aquinas (1964)

Therefore the determination of what is properly the old covenant and properly the new is not derived from the common division of the books into the Old and New Testaments or from the times of the two covenants, but it is manifest and certain from the basic points which we have shown… [T]he doctrine of the benefits of Christ the Mediator… [is] the definition of the new covenant according to Scripture…

The teaching of the righteousness of faith in Christ, wherever it exists in Scripture, pertains to the new covenant. The Calvinists indeed raise this objection against us that since the new covenant was not promulgated from the beginning, therefore it was not known to the patriarchs. But this is false. For it made itself known to them through revelation and the announcement of God, just as the life to come is already known to us. For unless the new covenant had been known to them, how could Abraham and the other faithful men have possessed the Holy Spirit and eternal life, since it is the new covenant which is the ministration of the Spirit and life?

Martin Chemnitz (Lutheran), Loci Theologici III: XV

The grace and blessings of the new covenant were given and ensured to Abraham for himself.

Nehemiah Coxe, Covenant Theology from Adam to Christ (75)

In the Mosaical oeconomy… some did believe [in Christ], others did not; and so some were related to God in the New Covenant, others remained under the Old[.]

Nehemiah Coxe, Vindiciæ veritatis, 134


All believers, who lived under the Old Testament, were saved by the covenant of grace, which Christ was to establish.

Keach, “The Display of Glorious Grace” in The Covenant Theology of Benjamin Keach (Conway: Free Grace Press, 2017), 110.

These things being observed, we may consider that the Scripture doth plainly and expressly make mention of two testaments, or covenants, and distinguish between them in such a way, as what is spoken can hardly be accommodated unto a twofold administration of the same covenant… Wherefore we must grant two distinct covenants, rather than a twofold administration of the same covenant merely, to be intended… If reconciliation and salvation by Christ were to be obtained not only under the old covenant, but by virtue thereof, then it must be the same for substance with the new. But this is not so; for no reconciliation with God nor salvation could be obtained by virtue of the old covenant, or the administration of it, as our apostle disputes at large, though all believers were reconciled, justified, and saved, by virtue of the promise, whilst they were under the covenant… This covenant thus made, with these ends and promises, did never save nor condemn any man eternally. All that lived under the administration of it did attain eternal life, or perished for ever, but not by virtue of this covenant as formally such… [T]herefore I have showed in what sense the covenant of grace is called “the new covenant,” in this distinction and opposition… The greatest and utmost mercies that God ever intended to communicate unto the church, and to bless it withal, were enclosed in the new covenant. Nor doth the efficacy of the mediation of Christ extend itself beyond the verge and compass thereof; for he is only the mediator and surety of this covenant.

Owen (Exposition, Hebrews 8:6, 9)

[D]uring the observation of the whole law of Moses, whilst it was in force by the appointment of God
himself, he still directed those who sought for acceptance with him unto a new covenant of grace, whose benefits by faith they were then made partakers of, and whose nature was afterwards more fully to be declared. See Jeremiah 31:31-34, with the inferences of our apostle thereon, Hebrews 8:13.

The Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Exercitation 8, Paragraph 22

[T]he New Covenant is powerful to save throughout all time, including the time of the Levitical administration (Heb 9:15; Jn. 8:58; Heb 7:3)… The author of Hebrews tells us this: “And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance” (Heb. 9:15). In other words, the New Covenant is effective in the salvation of the Old Testament saints… The Levitical administration could not save retroactively; in fact, it could not save at all. It could only look forward in anticipation. The Christ of the New Covenant was savingly effective in the lives of Abraham, Samuel, David, and countless others. The second covenant not only saves those under the second covenant, it saves believers under the first covenant.

Doug Wilson, To a Thousand Generations, 29-30

Hodge on Owen’s Influence Over American Presbyterians

On By brandonadamsIn baptism, John Owen, theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Writing in 1863, Hodge notes

The Puritan or Independent theory of the Church, that it consists exclusively of those who are deemed regenerate, and their minor children, has unfortunately gained ascendency over many of our ministers and members. This is to be attributed partly to the general familiarity with the writings of Owen and other English Independents, but especially to the all-prevailing influence of the ideas and principles of the New England Congregationalists.

Church Polity (244)

Compare with an 1857 essay in the Princeton Review titled “The Neglect of Infant Baptism.”

[W]hat most concerns us, we have often known it to be said, that in the Presbyterian Church there has been, for some time, a growing disregard for the baptism of children. Indeed, we have heard it boldly and publicly asserted, that this doctrine is fast becoming “a dead letter” in many parts of our Church…

[A]dverse influences were more and more operating on the minds of parents, and gradually destroying their regard for this seal of the covenant; thus producing increasing neglect of the ordinance from year to year.

It is our opinion that the decrease of infant baptism has really been caused by increased neglect. And, after carefully considering the subject – after conversing with brethren in all parts of the Church, and observing the proportion of baptism to members in many Churches; and after no only examining our own General Assembly’s early and later statistics, but also the statistics of baptisms in Churches in old and new settlements, 30, 40, and 50 years ago; we are with pain inevitably driven to the conclusion, that there cannot be less than one infant subject of baptism for every six members of the whole Church. And consequently we must conclude that whilst there were but 205,041 children reported as baptized during the last 20 years, the reports should have amounted to 618,339, leaving not less than 413,298 unbaptized.

neglect-of-infant-baptism-table

What causes have been at work to produce such extensive neglect of infant baptism?

1. We may mention the greatly increased and very extraordinary efforts of the various anti-Pedobaptist bodies, to disseminate their sentiments within the past thirty-five years.

The careful student of history cannot fail noticing a connection between the history of those efforts and the variations of the tables given above.

Compare with Ron Baines’ excellent essay SEPARATING GOD’S TWO KINGDOMS: Two Kingdom Theology among New England Baptists in the Early Republic in JIRBS 2014, as well as Presbyterian vs Congregationalist vs Baptist Sacramentology and The Evolution of Reformed Paedobaptism, as well as 1689 Federalism & America’s Founding.

Augustine Quick Quote

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All these things came upon Jerusalem the bond woman, in which some also reigned who were children of the free woman, holding that kingdom in temporary stewardship, but holding the kingdom of the heavenly Jerusalem, whose children they were, in true faith, and hoping in the true Christ.

Chapter 10.—How Different the Acts in the Kingdom of the Earthly Jerusalem are from Those Which God Had Promised, So that the Truth of the Promise Should Be Understood to Pertain to the Glory of the Other King and Kingdom.

EMFs

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In the long list of things I have found that are detrimental to my health (see health category for some background), I have realized that EMF from cell phones and WiFi are up near the top. Treating it (through EMF detox and avoidance) has given me a great deal more energy. I sent the following list of resources to someone recently and thought some of you may be interested:

So we have removed WiFi from the house and I use my cell phone much, much less. I finally got a VOIP yesterday so I will be using my cell phone only when I am away from home and need to make a call now (what a novel idea).

Alan Maher’s grounding products (starting with the shoe inserts) have been shockingly helpful. I would encourage everyone to take steps away from EMF exposure, and if you have chronic health issues, it is very likely EMFs are a contributing factor.