by Richard Barcellos | Feb 3, 2011 | Biblical Theology, Hermeneutics, Historical Theology, New Testament, Old Testament
Introduction
Covenant of Works
Covenant of Grace: The Programmatic Function of Genesis 3:15
Coxe sees the covenant of grace introduced via the promise of the gospel first revealed in Genesis 3:15. The 2nd LCF (1677), 7:3 says, “This Covenant [the covenant of grace in context; cf. 7:2] is revealed in the Gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of Salvation by the seed of the woman…”[1] In his Discourse of the Covenants, Coxe says:
11. It was from this design of love and mercy that when the Lord God came to fallen man in the garden in the cool of the day, and found him filled with horror and shame in the consciousness of his own guilt, he did not execute the rigor of the law on him. Instead he held a treaty with him which issued in a discovery of grace. By this a door of hope was opened to him in the laying of a new foundation for his acceptance with God and walking well pleasing before him.
1. For in the sentence passed on the serpent (which principally involved the Devil whose instrument he had been in tempting man, and who probably was made to abide in his possession of the serpent until he had received this doom, Genesis 3:15) there was couched a blessed promise of redemption and salvation to man. This was to be worked out by the Son of God made of a woman, and so her seed, and man was to receive the promised salvation by faith and to hope in it. In this implied promise was laid the first foundation of the church after the fall of man which was to be raised up out of the ruins of the Devil’s kingdom by the destruction of his work by Jesus Christ (1 John 3:8).[2]
Later Coxe adds:
From the first dawning of the blessed light of God’s grace to poor sinners faintly displayed in the promise intimated in Genesis 3:15, the redeemed of the Lord were brought into a new relation to God, in and by Christ the promised seed, through faith in him as revealed in that promise.[3]
This understanding of Genesis 3:15 gives Coxe’s work a Christocentric flavor from the beginning. In the first paragraph, he says:
The great interest of man’s present peace and eternal happiness is most closely concerned in religion. And all true religion since the fall of man must be taught by divine revelation which God by diverse parts and after a diverse manner[4] has given out to his church. He caused this light gradually to increase until the whole mystery of his grace was perfectly revealed in and by Jesus Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. God, whose works were all known by him from the beginning, has in all ages disposed and ordered the revelation of his will to men, his transactions with them, and all the works of his holy providence toward them, with reference to the fullness of time and the gathering of all things to a head in Christ Jesus. So in all our search after the mind of God in the Holy Scriptures we are to manage our inquiries with reference to Christ. Therefore the best interpreter of the Old Testament is the Holy Spirit speaking to us in the new. There we have the clearest light of the knowledge of the glory of God shining on us in the face of Jesus Christ, by unveiling those counsels of love and grace that were hidden from former ages and generations.[5]
Not only is this statement programmatic for a Christocentric understanding of Scripture, it also reflects the fact that Coxe viewed special revelation as progressive. The 2nd LCF, 7:2 says, “This covenant is revealed in the Gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of Salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the new Testament.” Coxe saw Christ as the hermeneutical center and focal-point of the whole Bible (i.e, scopus Scripturae [the scope or target of Scripture]).
[1] Cf. A Confession of Faith Put Forth by the Elders and Brethren of many Congregations of Christians (baptized upon Profession of their Faith) in London and the Country, Printed in the Year, 1677 (Auburn, MA: B&R Press, Facsimile edition, 2000), 27.
[2] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 55.
[3] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 59.
[4] Here he is dependent upon Beza. Cf. Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 33, n. 1.
[5] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 33.
Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.
Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.
by Richard Barcellos | Jan 20, 2011 | Biblical Theology, Historical Theology, New Testament, Old Testament, Systematic Theology
THE FEDERAL THEOLOGY OF NEHEMIAH COXE: Intro.
Coxe’s treatise discusses God’s covenants with Adam, Noah, and Abraham.[1] It is constructed in a linear-historical trajectory from creation, to fall, to redemption in typical federal fashion.
Covenant of Works
Coxe holds a robust federal view of the covenant of works. He called it the covenant of creation,[2] covenant of works,[3] covenant of friendship,[4] and a covenant of rich bounty and goodness.[5] Coxe held that God created Adam in his image with the law written in his heart. It was the sum of this law that was promulgated on Mount Sinai and delivered more briefly by our Lord “who reduced it to two great commandments respecting our duty both to God and our neighbor…”[6] Added to this moral law was “a positive precept in which he charged man not to eat of the fruit of one tree in the midst of the garden of Eden.[7] The covenant of works or creation was not co-extensive with creation but an addition to it. Coxe says:
In this lies the mystery of the first transaction of God with man and of his relationship to God founded on it. This did not result immediately from the law of his creation but from the disposition of a covenant according to the free, sovereign, and wise counsel of God’s will. Therefore, although the law of creation is easily understood by men (and there is little controversy about it among those that are not degenerate from all principles of reason and humanity), yet the covenant of creation, the interest of Adam’s posterity with him in it, and the guilt of original sin returning on them by it, are not owned by the majority of mankind. Nor can they be understood except by the light of divine revelation.[8]
It is not from any necessity of nature that God enters into covenant with men but of his own good pleasure. Such a privilege and nearness to God as is included in covenant interest cannot immediately result from the relationship which they have to God as reasonable creatures, though upright and in a perfect state.[9]
Adam had “the promise of an eternal reward on condition of his perfect obedience to these laws.”[10] The tree of life functioned sacramentally as “a sign and pledge of that eternal life which Adam would have obtained by his own personal and perfect obedience to the law of God if he had continued in it.”[11] Adam’s violation of the positive precept of Genesis 2:17 was also a violation of “that eternal law that is written in his heart.”[12]
[1] For an outline of Coxe’s treatise where this can be observed easily see Richard C. Barcellos, “Appendix One: Outline of Coxe” in Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 313-15.
[2] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 39, 46, 49, 53, 58.
[3] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 45, 49, 53.
[4] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 49, 51. This seems to be dependent upon Cocceius.
[5] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 49.
[6] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 43. For a brief survey of the highly nuanced view of the functions of the Decalogue in redemptive history in Reformed orthodoxy see my The Family Tree of Reformed Biblical Theology: The Method of and Contributions to the articulation of Redemptive History of Geerhardus Vos and John Owen (Owensboro, KY: RBAP, 2010), 277-297.
[7] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 43.
[8] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 49.
[9] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 36.
[10] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 44, 51. Coxe gives three proofs with discussion for the promise of an eternal reward on pages 45-46.
[11] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 45. Coxe justifies this function of the tree of life as follows: “The allusion that Christ makes to it in the New Testament (Revelation 2:7). …The method of God’s dealing with Adam in reference to this tree after he had sinned against him and the reason assigned for it by God himself [i.e., Genesis 3:22ff.]. …This also must not be forgotten: that as Moses’ law in some way included the covenant of creation and served for a memorial of it (on which account all mankind was involved in its curse), it had not only the sanction of a curse awfully denounced against the disobedient, but also a promise of the reward of life to the obedient. Now as the law of Moses was the same in moral precept with the law of creation, so the reward in this respect was not a new reward, but the same that by compact had been due to Adam, in the case of his perfect obedience.” Here Coxe is articulating Owen’s (and others’) view of the function of the covenant of works under the Mosaic covenant.
[12] Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 43, 51.
Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.
Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.
by Richard Barcellos | Dec 23, 2010 | Biblical Theology, Books, Ecclesiology, Hermeneutics, Historical Theology, New Testament, Old Testament
Nehemiah Coxe was a Particular Baptist.[1] Coxe is an important figure for contemporary, confessional Reformed Baptists for at least three reasons: (1) he was the co-editor (and most likely the “senior” editor) of the Particular Baptist Second London Confession of Faith (2nd LCF);[2] (2) he agreed with John Owen and other seventeenth-century Reformed orthodox theologians on the function of the covenant of works in redemptive history as it related to the Mosaic covenant;[3] and (3) he authored A Discourse of the Covenants that God made with men before the Law…, which is structured after the federal model, utilizes Reformed orthodox theological nomenclature, concepts, and sources, and is semantically Reformed orthodox, except portions of his exposition of the Abrahamic covenant(s).[4] These reasons for Coxe’s importance should force contemporary, confessional Reformed Baptists to ask themselves if Coxe’s theology is their theology. Since Coxe played a major role in the formulation of the 2nd LCF and since his federalism is clear and in substantial agreement with the federal theology of his day, then, if contemporary, confessional Reformed Baptists confess the things most surely believed among us, then shouldn’t they confess Coxe’s federalism?
[1] For a brief biography cf. James M. Renihan, “An Excellent and Judicious Divine: Nehemiah Coxe” in Nehemiah Coxe and John Owen, edited by Ronald D. Miller, James M. Renihan, and Francisco Orozco, Covenant Theology From Adam to Christ (Owensboro, KY: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2005), 7-24; James M. Renihan, “Confessing the Faith in 1644 and 1689” in RBTR, III:1 (July 2006): 33ff.; and Michael A. G. Haykin, Kiffin, Knollys and Keach (Leeds, England: Reformation Today Trust, 1996) for an introduction to three key Particular Baptists of the seventeenth century.
[2] Cf. Renihan, “An Excellent and Judicious Divine: Nehemiah Coxe,” 19-21 and Renihan, “Confessing the Faith in 1644 and 1689,” 33ff.
[3] Cf. Richard C. Barcellos, “John Owen and New Covenant Theology…” in Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 353-54. Coxe himself defers to Owen in Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 30.
[4] Cf. Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 71-140.
Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.
Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.
