# Chapter 3 on the Decrees of God



## C. Matthew McMahon (Sep 4, 2004)

Why do you think that the Westminster Divines created a conscious dichotomy between chapter 3 (decrees and predestination) and chapter 7 (covenant) when they put together the confession?

It seems there is a huge amount of confusion arising from trying to combine these two systematized thoughts.

If Predestination to life for the elect equals the fulfillment of their salvation in the Covenant of Grace, or that the Covenant of Grace is coextensive with salvation alone, then the NT was written in a very poor manner by the Holy Spirit. The NT would reflect a conscious emphasis on edification and sanctification, rather than a mix of those concepts with covenantal warnings. 

If one would like to throw away the terminology of the "Covenant of Redemption", then they must make a VERY conscious effort to explain exactly what they mean when they use the various formulas of the Covenant of Grace. For example, Turretin does not explicate the doctrine of predestination when he works through the Covenant of Grace. That would misinterpret HOW the Covenant of Grace works. Rather, the decrees of God furnish the reader and the student with enough material at that point to make a conscious distinction between how the Covenant of Grace affects the lives of men, and how the decreed counsel of God is preplanned before the foundation of the world. Without making that distinction, the idea of "covenant" will be lost, and in its place the idea of predestination to life will take up the idea of the Covenant of Grace fallaciously.

In predestination God eternally decrees the salvation of men based on the pact in which is regulated by the agreement of the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father. But Turretin also makes an important distinction in terms. Turretin simply divides the Covenant of Grace into two sections (the same division that the Westminster Assembly made in the Westminster Confession of Faith). If theologians and pastor today miss this, then their theology will again be befuddling.

There are two kinds of people that enter into a "œcovenants" status, a federal status, in relation to the Covenant of Grace. The first are the elect, by which the agreement between the Father and Son is beneficial to salvation for them, and then those federally holy, having the outward administration of the Covenant placed upon them (such as in circumcision and baptism). Without making that distention (something the WCF does, not only in the Confession, but even further in adding in the information for the Sum of Saving Knowledge WITH the Covenant of Redemption) then again, one will befuddle their terminology.

Theologians during the Reformation takes hundreds of pages to make these distinctions and to explain them. Today, we wield the ideas like they are pop guns in a game of cowboys and Indians. Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop, all around with no real ammunition to be seen. 

Covenant Theologians have painstakingly taken the time to exegete and explain these ideas. 

Personally, I think people read SECTIONS of a systematic - like Hodge, Turretin, Witsius, Raymond, Berkhoff, etc. without really systematizing it in their mind, run a few quotes off from these men and think they have all this down pat. I have been running into people in emails where an unhealthy amount of this kind of thing is continually confusing others. It is so painstaking to wade through ALL the material on this subject, we should be more careful to try and explain it before we publish papaers. I just went to another site, one on federal theology, that has a papaer on the "unconditional nature of the Covenant of Grace." That phrase in and of itself is so befuddling without a proper explanation, that those reading it will come away with a confused predestination theology, and then a confused covenantal theology. There are certain reasons why that phrase is true (for some - which takes explanation) and certain reasons why it is blatantly false (for certain reasons). 

I suppose more than asking a question this was an exhortation to be exceedingly careful not to throw around ideas without being SURE that we understand how those ideas function. And that not only in the writings of those we piecemail quotes from, but also how we interpret what those men said in a more full and comprehensive theology.


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## SolaScriptura (Sep 4, 2004)

Sound advice.


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