Samuel Rutherford

Samuel Rutherford (1600-61) expounded the promises and condition of the covenant of grace in his full-length treatment of covenant theology entitled The Covenant of Life Opened (1655), written less than a decade after the Westminster standards. Rutherford was separated from his Church of Scotland congregation at the command of bishops who were offended by the publication of his first book, a broadside against Arminianism. Rutherford took a large part in the debates at the Westminster Assembly, and worked with the drafting committee which drew up the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. He became professor of divinity at St. Andrews in 1638. His reputation as a writer was international. His university lectures, styled "an examination of Arminianism," were posthumously published in 1668 at Utrecht in the Netherlands. Rutherford is arguably Scotland's greatest theologian, a contemporary and counterpart to John Owen.

Rutherford describes the visible church with its means of grace as the place where the covenant of grace is externally administered. There are more in covenant with God than only those he has chosen to salvation. Those who make a visible profession in the church are externally and conditionally in covenant with God. But no one obtains the thing promised in the covenant, unless he fulfills the condition of the covenant, which is faith. Rutherford points out that it is the Anabaptists who hold that "there can be none but real believers under the New Testament in covenant with God,"(6) for they make no proper distinction between the outward administration of the covenant in the gospel offers, and the internal appropriation of the thing promised. "The Anabaptists ignorantly confound the promise and the thing promised, and covenant and benefits covenanted."(7)

For Rutherford, as for Calvin and Rollock, there is an external administration of the covenant by preaching, in which the promises of the covenant are offered to sinners generally. "All that are under the call and offer of Christ in the preached gospel, as Prov. 9:1-4, Matt. 22:3, Luke 14:16-18, etc., are externally in covenant. . . . The promise is to you and to your children can have no other sense than, the promise and word of the covenant is preached to you and to your children in you, and this is to be externally in covenant, both under the Old and New Testament. . . . The word of the covenant is preached to you, an offer of Christ is made in the preached gospel to you. Then it cannot be denied but the promise is to all the reprobate in the visible church whether they believe or not, for Christ is preached and the promises of the covenant are preached to Simon Magus, to Judas and all the hypocrites who stumble at the word, to all the Pharisees, as is clear, Matt. 13:20-23, Acts 13:44-45, Acts 18:5-6, Matt. 21:43, I Pet. 2:7-8."(8) This is the position taken in Westminster Larger Catechism 68.

The purpose of the conditional promise is to direct sinners to Christ as the only mediator. Faith in Christ is the condition to interest us in him. Therefore, the preaching of the conditional promise, in the external administration of the covenant, is a means to the end of salvation. "External covenanting goes before internal covenanting as the means before the end, and the cause before the effect, for faith comes by hearing of a sent preacher, and the preaching of the gospel is a saving means of begetting a new heart and of a new spirit. Hence 1. All must be first externally in covenant before they can be internally and really in covenant. 2. God is a God simply to some, and no more but a God to them in regard of outward church privileges, as the word, seals, protection, peace, hedge of discipline, his planting and watering by a ministry."(9)

Rutherford was also the author of several volumes written against the Separatist theory of church order, which depicted the church visible as made up of those who had already appropriated the substance of the covenant. Rutherford identifies this as the crux of the difference between the Separatists and the Presbyterians, complaining that his opponents take the privileges and promises proper to the invisible church and give all these to the visible church. In Christ's parable of the tares and the wheat, Rutherford understands the field to be the visible church, in which the seed of the Word is sown. The Presbyterian theory was that the church visible is a company of the externally called, and being attached to the church is a way to salvation.

Rutherford speaks of the preaching of the Word in the visible church as a draw-net, gathering the elect "by a visibly and audibly preached covenant."(10) Christ's church is the work-house of grace, where the Lord uses the means of grace to bring sinners to an internal appropriation of the covenant. "They are within the net, and in the office-house of grace the visible church, where the word is preached to children, who are to be taught, and the Lord reckons it among the favors that he bestows not on every nation, but only on his own covenanted Israel, that the word of the gospel to gather them and their children, and his statutes and his judgments are declared and preached to them, and that the oracles of God and the promises are committed to them."(11) Rutherford speaks movingly of the staggering privilege of being exposed to the means of grace in the visible church, and of sitting under the offers of the gospel: "But it's a rich mercy that professors are dwelling in the work-house of the grace of God, within the visible church. They are at the pool side, near the fountain, and dwell in Immanuel's land where dwells Jehovah in his beauty, and where are the golden candlesticks, and where there run rivers of wine and milk. Such are expectants of grace and glory. To such the marriage table is covered, eat if they will."(12)

As did Calvin and Rollock before him, Rutherford says that it is a great favor from God when a congregation has Christ and his benefits offered in the preaching. Rutherford distinguishes the grace of predestination from the gracious privilege of sitting under the means of grace. "It's a state of common grace to be within the visible church. . . . The same blessings of Abraham come on us Gentiles. But he and all his seed were blessed and in grace by the external call of the covenant. . . . And this external calling is of grace and so grace, no merit, as well as predestination to life is grace, or for grace. For whosoever are called, not because they are elect, but because freely loved of such a God and without merit called, . . . they are in a state of grace. But so are all within the visible church. . . . And external covenanting with God is of itself free grace and a singular favor bestowed of God."(13) Why this insistence by the old Reformed writers upon the privilege and favor of being under the means of grace? They believed that the outward administration of the covenant of grace is the means which the Lord ordinarily uses to communicate to us the benefits of redemption (Westminster Shorter Catechism 85).

But for all this privilege, many who are externally in covenant never possess the forgiveness and eternal life promised in the covenant, because they never respond with the condition required in the covenant, namely faith. The reason why they never believe is that God never gives them a new heart. There are conditional promises made in the external covenant, and the purpose of these is to direct us to Christ the object of faith, and to impress upon us our responsibility. But there are also promises in Scripture which are not conditional but absolute; the promise of a new heart is made only to the elect. "It is no inconvenient that the reprobate in the visible church be so under the covenant of grace as some promises are made to them and some mercies promised to them conditionally, and some reserved, special promises of a new heart and of perseverance belong not to them. For all the promises belong not the same way to the parties visibly and externally, and to the parties internally and personally in covenant with God. So the Lord promiseth life and forgiveness shall be given to these who are externally in the covenant, providing they believe, to these that are only externally in covenant. And yet he promiseth both to the elect."(14) This is the position taken in the Westminster Confession, VII.iii., and Larger Catechism 32, and 63 with 68. Rutherford says, "Not that he keeps not covenant even to external confederates, to wit, the conditional covenant. For if they should believe they should be saved. But he promised not a new heart and faith to them."(15)

If it be objected that "such as are externally within the covenant, are not really and indeed within the covenant of grace," the response is that "the adverb really relates to the real fruit of the fulfilled covenant, and so such as are only externally within the covenant are not really within the covenant, for God never directed nor intended to bestow the blessing covenanted, nor grace to perform the condition of the covenant upon them. But they are really covenanted and engaged by their consented profession to fulfill the covenant. . . . This is the special and principal covenanted blessing, I will give them a new heart, which must not be called a simple prediction, though a prediction it is. But it is also a real promise made absolutely to the elect, which the Lord fulfills in them, and this is called the covenant. . . . And therefore we cannot say that this promise of a new heart is made to all that are commanded to believe and repent and be baptized. For elect and reprobate and all are under these commands, if they be members of the visible church. But the promise of a new heart is not made to all within the visible church."(16)

Rutherford says that this distinction between conditional promises and absolute promises corresponds to that between the preceptive and decretive wills of God. The preceptive or revealed will of God declares the obligation and offer in the visibly-preached covenant. The decretive or secret will of God is manifested in the Lord's sovereign bestowal of a new heart. Rutherford observes that attention to this distinction will preserve us against the Antinomian distaste for the responsibilities laid out in the visible covenant, and against the Arminian aversion to divine prerogative. We will understand the place for both human agency and divine sovereignty. Rutherford says, "The new covenant must be considered, 1. As preached according to the approving and commanding will of God. 2. As it is internally and effectually fulfilled in the elect according to the decree and the Lord's will of purpose. . . . For Antinomians and legal justitiaries miserably err in both extremities."(17)

Rutherford also writes about the human parties in the covenant of grace. The parties in the external administration of the covenant include many who are not parties in the covenant internally appropriated. "The parties contractors in the covenant preached are God, and all within the visible church, whether elect or reprobate, and their seed, they professing the gospel, . . . and they were not all the chosen of God."(18) On the one hand, this must be said in opposition to the Antinomians and Anabaptists, who speak only of the internal covenant made with the elect, and will not acknowledge a visible covenant with conditions required of men. And on the other hand, the Arminian tenet of salvation by human free will is excluded when we refer to the elect as the only parties in that internal covenant which the Lord efficaciously fulfills. "Now though salvation be offered, yet the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, and merited by the ransom and price of his blood, can be decreed and intended in the preached gospel to none but to the elect."(19) In this sense, it may be said that the elect are the proper parties contracting in the covenant of grace.(20)

While Rutherford was in London, as a commissioner from the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Assembly, he was apprehensive about the quick spread of both Arminianism and Antinomianism, and he carefully assessed and condemned these opposite errors, often in the same book. Two hundred years later, the Scottish Presbyterian theologian "Rabbi" John Duncan (1796-1870) observed in his Colloquia Peripatetica: "Samuel Rutherford, in his work on Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself, gives us some unpretending but deep philosophy. He denies power in the will against the Arminian, and asserts it against the Antinomian position. And any other doctrine of power uncreaturifies the creature. It either brutifies man or deifies him."(21) That is, the Arminian ascribes divine powers to the man who is believed to frustrate God's decree, and so deifies man. And the Antinomian exalts divine sovereignty so as to remove man's agency, and thus brutifies man. The Antinomianism against which Rutherford wrote would not deny necessarily that believers are to walk in righteousness for sanctification, but its hallmark was and still is an exalting of divine sovereignty in a way foreign to the Scriptures and to the Reformed faith, so that teaching about human agency is viewed as a threat to imputed righteousness, or a concession to moral ability in the unregenerate. If we learn anything from Scotland's greatest theologian, it should be that whenever a man's attention is fixed upon opposing only one of these dangers, Arminianism or Antinomianism, he is already falling into the contrary error. Any statement of biblical teaching on these subjects must be carefully proportioned to condemn aberrant views in both directions.

This teaching about an outward aspect of the covenant as a means of bringing sinners to salvation is not a peculiarity of infralapsarians, with their special appreciation for the historical means by which the divine purpose is executed. We should remember that Rutherford was a supralapsarian, and had such a high doctrine of the sovereignty of the divine will that he believed, against Owen, that the Lord could have pardoned sin merely by an act of his will, without recourse to a satisfaction of divine justice, as by an atonement. But Rutherford does not exalt divine sovereignty at the expense of biblical teaching about the means which God uses in history for accomplishing his own purpose.

Rutherford vigorously defends the conditional promises of the external covenant, as being the sound Reformed defence against Antinomianism. Conditions in the covenant set forth responsible human agency. "The Antinomians do also own no covenant of grace, but this wherein the new heart is given and the condition is both promised and given. And Dr. Crisp saith . . . 'The new covenant is without any conditions whatsoever upon man's part. Man is tied to no condition that he must perform, that if he do not perform, the covenant is made void by him.' Answer. Man is under a condition of believing, and tied to believe, so as the wrath of God abides upon him, he shall not see life nor be justified, if he believe not, John 3:18, 36; Rom. 10:6-9."(22)

Finally, Rutherford comments on the connection between the covenant of redemption or suretyship, and the covenant of grace or reconciliation. The covenant of God with sinners is dependent upon the intertrinitarian covenant, and upon the redemption procured by Christ under the terms of that eternal covenant of redemption. "It is not the same covenant that is made with Christ and that which is made with sinners. They differ in the subject or the parties contracting. In this of suretyship, the parties are Jehovah God as common to all the three on the one part, and on the other the only Son of God the second person undertaking the work of redemption. In the covenant of reconciliation, the parties are God the Father, Son and Spirit, out of free love pitying us, and lost sinners who had broken the covenant of works. Hence the covenant of suretyship is the cause of the stability and firmness of the covenant of grace."(23)

The covenant of grace cannot stand by itself, because of the weakness of the believer. But if our trust is placed in the faithfulness of God to the articles of the covenant of redemption, we need not fear for our salvation. "Though the covenants of suretyship and of reconciliation differ, yet must they not be separated. But faith principally must be fixed upon the most binding covenant relation between Jehovah and the Son of God. Eye Christ always in the covenant, else it's but the sheath or scabbard of a covenant, and a letter to us." Faith should fix upon the covenant of redemption. The promises which the believer inherits must come to him through Christ's work of redemption. "Christ is the chief and principal thing promised, and other things that are freely given us by promise are given to us with Christ, or after that he hath given us Christ. . . . Our blood relation to the family stands by Christ, interest to promises comes all this way. The Lord's method is, Get first Christ, then all the promises are yours, for they follow him. And Christ well manages covenant promises as they tend to the good of his own."(24)

Notes
(6) Samuel Rutherford, The Covenant of Life Opened (Edinburgh: Andro Anderson for Robert Brown, 1655), p. 79.
(7) Ibid., p. 90.
(8) Ibid., pp. 87-88.
(9) Ibid., pp. 107-08.
(10) Ibid., p. 84.
(11) Ibid., pp. 77-78.
(12) Ibid., p. 340.
(13) Ibid., p. 107.
(14) Ibid., p. 94.
(15) Ibid., p. 108.
(16) Ibid., pp. 92-93.
(17) Ibid., p. 340.
(18) Ibid.
(19) Ibid., p. 341.
(20) Ibid., p. 309.
(21) William Knight, Colloquia Peripatetica, fifth ed., enlarged (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1879), pp. 164-65.
(22) Rutherford, Covenant of Life, pp. 344-45.
(23) Ibid., pp. 308-09.
(24) Ibid., p. 314.

Go to the next installment:
The Preached Covenant: Part III