God's Covenant with Noah: Part of the Covenant of Grace or No?

[JTB.SDG]

Guys,

I'm convinced that the Covenant with Noah belongs wholly to the Covenant of Grace. Thomas Goodwin has some great stuff on this (Works, V9) and argues convincingly for it. Francis Roberts also takes the same position, as do many of those who followed in their footsteps, like A.W. Pink, Jonathan Edwards, etc.

I need to brush up on the alternative position, and may be mis-characterizing it, but from what I understand, many folks take it to be part of the Covenant of Grace ONLY IN SO FAR AS it serves to preserve the world FOR the Covenant of Grace (but in and of itself it's not really part of the Covenant of Grace, most notably because it is said that God's covenant is with not only Noah and his seed, but all the animals). I personally take the animals (clean and unclean) as representing Jew and Gentile, and that the focus isn't animals--but that God makes the covenant with EVERYTHING that comes out of the ark with Noah. It's not with the whole world--the whole world was destroyed in the flood--the covenant is made only with those whom God saved in the ark with Noah out of the world; IE, believers in Christ.

Here's my question: Where did this second way of handling the Noahic Covenant come from (in church history)? It seems that some of the Puritans simply skipped over Noah and went straight from Adam to Abraham (IE, Ball); perhaps not knowing what to do with Noah? But those who actually dealt with the Covenant with Noah among the puritans seemed to place it squarely in the Covenant of Grace. Where and how did this OTHER view emerge? Thoughts? Many thanks in advance...

 

[JTB.SDG]

UPDATE: Re-reading an article by Ronald Cammenga of the Protestant Reformed Church called, "The Covenant withNoah: Common Grace or Cosmic Grace?" He argues that Abraham Kuyper largely introduced this view of the Noahic Covenant, opening (and thus sort of basing) his massive 3 volume work on common grace with the narrative of Noah. Cammenga says that there was always the other view on the covenant with Noah (Kuyper even confesses so) long before Kuyper. Again, I know Goodwin has a great section on this in V9; and Roberts also cites Perkins, and two others I didn't know of: Andre Rivet and David Pareus, along with Henry Ainsworth, as defending the Noah belonging to the Covenant of Grace view. Does this sound right? Is Cammenga right on? Is it that Noah as part of the Covenant of Grace was THE main view in the beginning, but Kuyper introduced something different that in turn kind of took over (IE, Noah was all about common grace)? Can anyone affirm or correct any of this? Thanks again.

 

[earl40]

(IE, Noah was all about common grace)?

If Noah was only about common grace what about The Seed that came out of him? I will admit I do not know much about Kyper, but from what I have gleamed from him is the thinking that the common man (unordained) can bring about saving grace to the masses by some type of social reform which includes the layman preaching the gospel. I have seen this when Ordained Ministers insist and task the laity to do what the ordained are solely called to do.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

I can't speak to the origins of the alternative. I know that some recent expressions aim at finding some ground in covenant for God still relating to the world in general beyond his relation as Creator and by the terms of the original CoW. I'm not sure why this should be thought necessary.

The "only insofar as" qualifier suggests there is another purpose--maybe even a more substantial purpose--for God's covenant with Noah. That seems rather odd, coming out of the covenant-word. That language makes it seem as if the CoG works for or is superadded to creation; or is grafted to human existence, which has some telos apart from fellowship with God and manifestation of divine glory.

Man's continuation in such life as he still has in this world is wholly contingent on divine grace, which is exercised solely for the sake of the elect. If not for redemptive purposes, our first parents would have been blotted out when they sinned and fell. And (it seems reasonable to me) the rest of creation would also have been effaced with them, and the business begun again from scratch. I don't know how the lower creation gets preserved, when the crown of creation has marred the whole work, not simply corrupted part of it in themselves.

I suppose that thought to be connected with the covenant God makes with Noah and all animals. This new-cast of covenant is in continuity with antediluvian expressions of covenant, and with the subsequent progressive instances. Here with Noah is affirmation that the animals were preserved because man was preserved (by grace); and they afterward benefit by the terms of covenant God makes with man--and basically in no other way.

The Noaic covenant is founded upon a sacrifice; hence it is undoubtedly of the essence of the CoG. It resets the conditions of the post-fall, edenic promise, ensuring that the work of redemption moves forward in the world that has experienced a cataclysmic judgment, but has been (so to speak) reborn. The promises of stability (i.e. reliable cause-and-effect conditions reflected in the cycles of nature) are to be seen as serviceable to the CoG. The intermediate price paid is that even those in rebellion to God obtain residual benefits from the effects of grace. The rain falls on both the just and the unjust.

It looks to me otherwise, that God is viewed as making promises to creation (and rebels as such) for its own sake. And that view just seems to me completely out of sync with the biblical narrative. Nor do I cotton to any notion that superadds grace to anything "more fundamental."

 

[MW]

There are some basic questions which this view leaves unanswered. Foremost among these question is, if this is not the covenant of grace, where is it? Those who advocate that the covenant with Noah and his seed is not the covenant of grace usually claim that this "covenant of preservation" is founded on the covenant of grace, but what are their grounds for saying that there is a covenant of grace at this time? They are required to make the covenant of grace something less than historical in order to assert that the covenant made with Noah (or, according to some, only the covenant made after the flood) was not the covenant of grace per se.

Another question, which is really the same question in a more particular mode -- How is it possible to think of the promise made to Noah and his seed as finding no distinctive place for Shem as the progenitor of the "seed," and the inheritor of the "blessing." "Seed" and "blessing" are foundational to the Abrahamic narrative. If the promise of the covenant of grace is not found in Shem, where is it to be found? And what is the reason that Abraham's descent is specifically traced back through Shem to Noah?

Then we have a fundamental dogmatic question or a series of inter-related questions bearing on the fundamentals of our faith. Are we to believe that God enters into covenant with sinful men on some basis other than the righteousness of Christ? that God enters into immediate relations to restrain His justice and refrain from punishing sinners without respect to propitiation? that there is no Mediator through Whom He condescends to treat with sinful men? What was that sweet savour which the Lord smelled, and upon which He declared His purpose of preservation?