sense that God obligates Himself in grace (by the unre stricted declaration, “ I will” ) to accomplish certain an nounced purposes, despite any failure on the part of the person or group with whom He covenants. The human response to the divinely announced purpose is always im portant, leading as it does to blessing for obedience and discipline for disobedience. But human failure is never permitted by God to abrogate the covenant nor block its ultimate fulfillment. (Ill) A covenant is conditional when its establishment is made dependent upon man’s acceptance of the terms of the contract, as for example in the case of Israel’s accept ance of the terms of the Mosaic Covenant, as evidenced by the words in Exodus 19:5, 8: “ if ye will obey . . . ye shall then be” (v. 5) . . . i.e., God’s offer [which compact Israel accepted as ex pressed in verse 8 ], “all the people answered . . . ‘all the LORD hath spoken, we will do’ ” i.e., man’s response. In the light of these definitions, it will be helpful to summarize our discussion of the Abrahamic Covenant in respect to what makes a covenant conditional or uncondi tional. It is regrettable that many definitions of a conditional covenant hinge around the idea that God commits Him self to bless a person or group so long as obedience is forth coming, and warns that He will of necessity discipline him or them if disobedience should later result. It will be found from the definitions above that this is not that which makes a covenant conditional. It was seen that all of God’s great unconditional covenants are not dependent upon the human response to keep them in force. God proposes to see to it that they are kept in force. That is what makes them unconditional. But it must also be borne in mind that in the case of every one of God’s unconditional covenants, “ the human response to the divinely announced purpose is always important, leading as it does to blessing for obedience and discipline for dis obedience. But human failure is never permitted by God to abrogate the covenant nor block its ultimate fulfill ment.” And, on the contrary, we saw that the better solution as to what constitutes a conditional covenant, is to observe as in our definition that the condition is something which precedes the establishment of the covenant. Once the condition is accepted by man, then the covenant is rati fied. Further the conditional covenant is to be distin guished from the unconditional covenant in the fact that a conditional covenant is not permanent, since man’s fail ure not only brings discipline, as in the unconditional covenant, but it can in God’s time lead to the dissolution or voiding of the terms of the contract. This is something which could never occur in an unconditional covenant. To return to our discussion of the Abrahamic Covenant in the light of the above, it should be carefully borne in mind that we should avoid confusing an act of obedience as being necessary to the institution of an unconditional covenant. Indeed, the fulfillment of a condition before a covenant is ratified would, according to my definition, make that covenant a conditional one, whereas Abraham’s various acts of obedience (or his regrettable failures) would not in any way condition the validity of the mak ing or continuance of an unconditional covenant. If one argues that the covenant of God with Abraham was tentative until Abraham obeyed some condition upon which the establishment of the covenant would hinge, one has laid the foundation for the argument that the covenant was not unconditional, but conditional in its institution, as well as in its continuance. (Concluded on Next Page)
the covenant was unconditionally given in Ur to one who God knew would obey Him because he believed Him and loved Him. The key passage in substantiation of this thesis is recorded in Genesis 18:17-19, where we read: “And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.” Observe that this was said before the great climactic act of obedience in Genesis 22, and it presents the better explanation of what God subsequently said in Genesis 22:16-18: “ By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: (17) That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.” This solution avoids the peril of making the institution of the Abrahamic Covenant dependent upon the obedience of Abraham, which all admit was at first very incomplete. The peril is all the more aparent when it is remembered that his obedience was not declared by God to be complete until he demonstrated his willingness to slay Isaac in sacrifice (Gen. 22). Thus the solution avoids the peril of starting an obedience aspect of the covenant, demanded by amillennialists as being continuous, but which the usual premillennial view wishes to break off arbitrarily somewhere along the line between chapter 11 and and chapter 22. If we start with obedience as a prerequi site to the covenant, the amillennialist has a right to claim we are inconsistent and have no warrant to stop with Abraham’s leaving Ur, for who can confidently declare at what point his obedience would be sufficiently complete to cause God to establish the covenant? If Genesis 22 be urged as the completion of his obedience, then the covenant was not made in Genesis 12 or 15, but only after Isaac was offered in Genesis 22. This would work against and not for premillennialists in our argument with the amillennialists. The discussion concerning the Abrahamic Covenant above may well lead to a broader inquiry than this one covenant. To be specific, what do we mean by an uncon ditional covenant? And what do we mean by a conditional covenant? And, perhaps more basic, what is a covenant? Here are my suggested definitions: (I) A covenant is a sovereign pronouncement of God by which He establishes a relationship of responsibility (1) between Himself and an individual (e.g., Adam in the Edenic Covenant), (2) between Himself and mankind in general (e.g., in the promise of the Noahic Covenant never again to destroy all flesh with a flood), (3) between Himself and a nation (e.g., Israel in the Mosaic Covenant, Ex. 19:3ff.), or (4) between Himself and a specific human family (e.g., the house of David in the promise of a kingly line in perpetuity through the Davidic Covenant). A cove nant of one category may overlap with other categories, as in the case of the Davidic Covenant where the promise of a continuing kingly house to David has tremendous results to the nation Israel and the whole world of men in the eventual reign of Jesus Christ. (II) The covenants are normally unconditional in the
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