God's Covenant of Redemption....

I suppose for the sake of clarity it would be good to mention two things. First, that I believe that while the word "trinity" doesn't appear in the canon of scripture, we can in fact discern three distinct members of our one God in the Bible. So...God is, one nature in three persons. Second, I see the Bible as inerrant, and therefore authoritative regarding matters of the faith[1].

  Simply put, God's covenant of redemption (also called the "Pactum Salutis") is a foundational structure to his covenant of grace. Meaning that God had determined a plan for salvation according to his own counsel prior to the Creation. Within this plan we see each member of the trinity operating in distinct ways. We see that God the Father declares the Covenant; God the Son procures (delivers & ratifies) the covenant, and God the Holy Spirit seals or applies the covenant[2]. When considering this, we have to remember that the distinct members of the trinity are equals. We certainly can perceive differing functions between the Father, Son, and Spirit, but that difference does not point to a hierarchy, but the perfect dependency that exists within the Trinity.  I could say more on that note, but I don't think it will serve anything except to muddy the waters.

  It's interesting to scrutinize the ways we perceive the Creation. Often times I fall into the trap of somehow thinking that the incarnation of Jesus was decided in a dispensational way. That God's covenant with Abraham didn't pan out, so he sent the Israelites into slavery in Egypt to "teach them a lesson". That the Mosaic Law was God's way of giving humanity another crack at salvation. When we messed that up, he sent the Son incarnate to give us yet another shot. Thankfully, none of that is true. When we consider the eternal nature of the Pactum Salutis one if it's major implications is that the Old Testament Covenants and the Mosaic Law serve to establish our salvation through faith in Christ alone. According to the dispensational way of thinking, the ministry of Jesus is like a parachute. A pulling of the cosmic e-brake to keep the vehicle (us) from careening over a bridge. According to the Pactum Salutis Jesus is more like a music note that resolves the discordant tones that came before it.

Next week I'll go into more depth about how the Trinitarian roles play out in scripture.
 





1.Subtitles for Jeremy! I mention these things because I will undoubtedly refer to the distinct members of the trinity & their role in our salvation. I brought up the nature of scripture because I will be drawing out of it to under-gird my statements.
2. It is important to note, that while the Father's declaration occurs "outside of time" the functions of the Son and the Holy Spirit are seen in and throughout history as evidence of the Father's declaration.

Summer Stuff

Alright....forgive me for being a horrible blogger. Here's the deal, without having a direct "teaching" to do I need some other way to provide a sense of purpose and structure to my studies (and guarantee that I pursue them). So...enter the summer theology blogs! Every week I am going to publish a theologically driven blog. It could get interesting since I don't have the abilities to include footnotes on here, and there's no way I'm going to type them all out completely.....so the scripture proofs will be included in parenthesis. But they wont be exhaustive by any means. Feel free to chime in for discussion purposes or question asking...so long as we don't have any comment duels or rants.