Woolsey, Andrew A. (1988) Unity and continuity in covenantal thought

379 Pages·2008·17.13 MB·English

Woolsey, Andrew A. (1988) Unity and continuity in covenantal thought:
a study in the reformed tradition to the Westminster Assembly. PhD
thesis.

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rIvII J TE I? A M13 L Y
Andrew Alex8nder Woolsey
VOLUME ONE
A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
September, 1988
1988 Andrew A. Woolsey
Scottish History Department
University of Glasgow
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Vol. I 3

Summary 4
PART ONE
SETTING THE SCENE
1. Historical Background to The Westminster

Assembly 8
2. Sources and Covenant Doctrine of The

Westminster Standards 44
3. Historiography of Covenantal Thought: The

Nineteenth Century 101
4. Ristoriography of Covenantal Thought: The

Twentieth Century 129
PART TWO
FORERUNNERS

5. The Covenant in the Church Fathers 200

6. The Covenant in Medieval Thought 230

7. The Covenant In the Early Reformers 255
PART THREE
THE GENEVAN INFLUENCE

8. John Calvin: The Unity of the Covenant 313

9. : Covenant, Law, and Grace 343

10. : Covenantal Conditions Vol.11 3

11. : Covenant and Predestination 18

12. : Conclusion 41

13. Theodore Beza and the Covenant 50
PART FOUR
POST-REFORMATION DEVELOPMENT

14. The Heidelberg Story: Zacharius Ursinus 114

15. Casper Olevianus 142
16. The Puritan Stream : Thomas Cartwright

and Dudley Fenner 167

17. William Perkins I 90

18. The Scottish Connection: John Knox 238
19. Robert Rollock and

Robert Howie 255

20. Conclusion 291

Abbreviations 308

Bibliography 310
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The privilege of engaging in an extended period of
research naturally involves a lot of people, without whose
assistance such an undertaking would not be possible. The
following work is no exception, and I wish here to
acknowledge my indebtedness to many friends who have
provided support and encouragement, and to several sources
of help in particular.
The provision of a Major Scottish Studentship Award
made this research financially possible in the first place,
and enabled us as a family to continue living with some
degree of normality during the past three years. For this
I am deeply grateful.
Secondly, no words are adequate to express the debt I
owe to my supervisor, Dr. James Kirk of the Scottish
History Department. Dr. Kirk's gracious manner, his
timely suggestions, personal kindness, and not least his
constant encouragement during the times of 'heavy weather',
all contributed enormously in bringing this work to
completion.
I also wish to record my thanks to the staff of the
Scottish History Department and of Glasgow University
Library, especially the Inter Library Loans and Special
Collections Departments, for their patience with seemingly
endless requirements, and for their persistence in tracking
down numerous books and articles. A similar debt Is owed
for assistance received from the staff at New College
Library, the National Library, Edinburgh University
Library, and St. Andrews University Library.
Finally, to my own family, who, perhaps more than any
others must have felt that 'much study is a weariness to
the flesh', I owe the greatest debt of all. Whatever
sacrifice they have been called to make (and they have not
been few), and whatever 'bookish' moods they have had to
endure, it has all been borne cheerfully and with scarcely
a word of complaint. So it Is to my wife, Joan, and
children, Ruth and Stephen - covenantal blessings indeed -
that I gladly dedicate these volumes.
29th September, 1988.
Scottish History Department,
University of Glasgow,
9 University Gardens,
Glasgow G12 8Q11
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SUMMARY
The Westminster Assembly is a useful starting point
for detailed discussion of the development of covenantal
thought, particularly in view of the direction taken by
recent studies which place a strong dichotomy between the
early Reformers and their seventeenth-century successors,
notably between John Calvin and those who have
traditionally been designated 'Calvinists'. The most
extreme, or virulent, of these is an unsparing attack upon
the Westminster Confession as one of the principal
reservoirs of 'a plague that had long infected the Reformed
churches'. In seeking to overthrow what he described as
'the treasured confession of my mother church', the author
made the astonishing claim, which puts this basic issue in
a curious nutshell: 'It was Calvin who rescued me from the
Calvinists'. And the deadly virus identified as the cause
of this plague was the Confession's covenantal statements,
of which it was said, 'Calvin knew nothing, for these
theological innovations were the work of his successors'.1
In order to set the scene, therefore, Part One of the
thesis has been devoted to a consideration of the
background to the Westminster Assembly and its documents,
an examination of the sources and content of the theology
of the covenant expressed in the standards, and also a
critical survey of the historiography of the covenant from
around the middle of the last century to the present time.
The historical background to the Assembly as it relates to
both the English and Scottish churches Is designed to get
the feel of the general ecclesiastical climate and
theological orientation In which the divines and their
immediate predecessors lived and moved, while the
examination of sources and content more particularly
identifies the direction from which the doctrine of the
covenant came to be embodied in the Confession and
Catechisms, and also the issues which are emphasized In,
and Immediately related to, the chapters dealing
specifically with the covenant.
The scriptural origin of the Reformed doctrine of the
covenant is Indisputable, so that serious research in this
area has never been considered necessary. The temptation
to include a section on Scripture in this study has
likewise been resisted, but its importance has been kept In
mind throughout. In order to demonstrate that the Idea of
the covenant as held by the Reformed church, even in many
of Its particular aspects, was no new thing, Part Two picks
up some of the threads offered by forerunners in the field.
These Include several of the church fathers, notably
Augustine. The survival and use of the Idea in both its
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political and theological applications during the medieval
period has not been overlooked. It was found that the
idea of the covenant had specific governmental,
hermeneutical and soterlological functions in medieval
thought which were by no means dspised or abandoned in the
reaction of the Reformation against medieval scholasticism.
Among the early reformers, Luther's theology held
firmly to the basic concepts underlying covenantal
theology, but it was in the Reformed camp that the
importance of the doctrine was chiefly recognized and
utilized in the controversies of the time, first by
Oecolanipadius and Zwingli and then more distinctly by
Bullinger, whose little monograph De Testamento seu foedere
Del unico et aeterno was the first to appear on the
subject. The findings of this research into Bullinger's
work interact strongly with those studies which regard
Bullinger's view of the covenant as strictly bilateral and
consequently portray him as the founder of a separate
Reformed tradition, distinct from that which emanated from
Calvin and the Genevan school.
Part Three is devoted entirely to Geneva, showing the
seminal influence of Calvin's work in the development and
transmission of covenantal thought. In demonstrating that
the covenant in both its unilateral and bilateral aspects
was an essential part of Calvin's overall theological
structure, the disputed questions as to whether Calvin was
a 'covenant theologian', and whether he taught a covenant
of works is carefully considered in its proper theological
context and not merely with respect to the use of terms.
For the first time in any study of covenantal
thought, detailed attention has been given in this research
to the work of Theodore Beza. Beza has been consistently
singled out by those who oppose the Calvinists to Calvin,
as the guilty party in initiating a rigid, theocentric,
supralapsarian, scholastic orthodoxy which diverged
manifestly from Calvin's warm, Christocentric, humanistic,
biblical theology. Tust as consistently he has been
denied any interest in the theology of the covenant, with
the result that 'covenant theology' has been interpreted as
a reaction against Bezean orthodoxy in an effort to recover
a place for responsible man in the economy of salvation.
The evidence, however, supplied by a wider consultation of
Beza's works than his merely controversial writings,
supports a contrary argument. Beza's basic fidelity to
Calvin becomes apparent in controverted areas and the warm
heart of a concerned pastor is heard to beat in his
sermonic material. More importantly f or this research,
Beza is found to have a keen Interest in the covenant both
unilaterally and bilaterally, particularly In relation to
the doctrine of the union between Christ and his church,
just as Calvin had before him and the Calvinists after him.
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In the final part of the thesis the issues and
arguments already raised are followed through in
representative writers from three main interrelated
locations of post-reformation development in Reformed
theology. One is the influence of the Heidelberg
theologians, Ursinus and Olevianus, In the Palatinate
Church of Germany. The others are the English Puritan
movement, dominated mainly by the influence of William
Perkins, and the Scottish connection In the writings of
Knox, Rollock and Howie.
It is the conclusion of this research that while
covenantal theology Inevitably underwent a process of
refining and expansion, and was given fuller definition and
varying emphases by later writers, that it nevertheless
remained true to the central idea or ideas of the covenant
as taught by the Reformers. Such a process cannot be
construed as constituting a fundamental shift or departure
from the theology of the early Reformers. Rather there Is
a general agreement, a unity and continuity in the Reformed
theology of the covenant which makes the Westminster
divines In this respect the worthy successors of Calvin and
his colleagues.
Notes
1 H. Rolston III, John Calvin versus The Westminster
Confession (Richmond, 1972), 5-6, 23.
2 J.W. Baker, Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant: The
Other Reformed Tradition, (Ohio, 1980), Is a recent example
of this viewpoint.
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PART ONE
rrr xic
TIIE C
CHAPTER ONE
Historical Background to The Westminster
Assembly
The original Intention in contemplating this research
in the development of Reformed covenantal thought in the
early seventeenth century was to concentrate on the
Westminster Assembly (1643-49), with particular focus upon
the representatives of the General Assembly of the Church
of Scotland, 1 and the Importance of their contribution in
the deliberations of that distinguished body, especially in
the formulation of Its documents, the Westminster
Standards.2
It soon became obvious, however, that the Confession
of Faith and the Catechisms were gathering together in a
clear, concise and comprehensive fashion the fruits of
theological debate and development with roots going deep
Into the sixteenth-century Reformation and beyond. For
example, one not otherwise uncritical of the Confession,
has commented that 'It marks the maturest and most
deliberate formulation of the scheme of Biblical revelation
as it appeared to the most cultured and the most devout
Puritan minds. It was the last great creed-utterance of
Calvinism, and intellectually and theologically it is a
worthy child of the Institutes'. 3 Another has remarked
that work done by the Westminster Assembly of Divines was
'the ablest and ripest product' of the Reformation of the
sixteenth century.d Again the Confession has been
described as 'an admirable summary of faith and practice',
which lacked only In originality, for the simple reason
that 'These later divines.. .availed themselves of the
labours of the Reformation... Bullinger and Calvin,
especially the latter. . . left them little to accomplish,
except In the way of arrangement and compression'.
From this perspective Westminster represented not so
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much the central focus, much less the inauguration, of a
theological era, but rather the culmination of a period of
intense theological discussion and ecclesiastical feet-
finding after the momentous upheaval of renaissance,
reformation and revolution which had gripped Europe, and
the implications of which were still being worked out in
many countries, including England and Scotland. It
represented rather 'the most complete and mature
development of Reformed theology in creedal formu.G
This is not to say that further theological
development, particularly in covenantal thought, was
stultified after the mid-seventeenth century, but the
manner in which the Confession of Faith has remained for
three centuries the subordinate standard of faith f or many
branches of the Christian church, is ample evidence that
some fairly substantial and conclusive statements had been
made. 7 From another perspective, the Westminster Assembly
can be viewed as the beginning of a remarkable period of
religious stimulation and growth in the English-speaking
world, which was not without its political significance
also, and in which the idea of the covenant was to have a
prominent place.
The pursuit of various issues in covenantal thought,
therefore, drove this research back into an earlier period
of which the Westminster Assembly is roughly the cut-off
point. In the process it inevitably widened the horizons
beyond the Scottish scene to embrace the continental,
English, and, to some extent, the New England churches in
all the complexities and variety of their controversies and
counsels.
In the course of the study some discussion will be
necessary regarding what constitutes 'covenant theology' or
a covenantal theologian. It may be helpful at this stage,
however, to indicate briefly a working definition of the
concept as used in the following pages. Historians have
tended to define 'covenant theology' with respect to the
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