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The Covenant of Redemption: Origins, Development, and Reception. By J. V. Fesko. Gottingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016, 256 pp., $76.55, hardcover.
For centuries, detractors have maligned the doctrine of the pactum salutis (an intratrinitarian, eternal covenant of redemption) as a speculative, rationalistic, nonbiblical, hair-splitting byproduct of Reformed orthodoxy (ca. 1560-1725). Consequently, this so-called covenant of redemption has been relegated to the theological attic as little more than a relic warning of the danger of scholastic method. J. V. Fesko, however, critically weakens such accusations in the work under review and offers an attempt at retrieval.
Fesko describes his aim as essentially polemical in nature: his primary intention is to systematically disprove the most common objections to the covenant of redemption. He confesses in the preface that he himself sympathizes with the cov- enant of redemption and that, consequently, the matter is personal. However, he attempts to produce the results of an unbiased research process. In this he largely succeeds.
Fesko begins his body of work by defying the claim that the pactum was an innovation of the post-Reformation period. He surveys evidence of the covenant of redemption's primary ingredients in the early Reformation in figures such as Martin Luther (1483-1546), Johannes Oecolampadius (1482-1531), and John Calvin (1509-1564). He also explains how the production of a critical NT and return to the original Greek rather than the Latin during the period led to greater awareness of an eternal covenant between the Father and Son, particularly through passages such as Luke 22:29 (Jesus's words to his disciples, "I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom"). In other words, the Bible was the critical impetus of exploration into this locus.
In subsequent chapters, Fesko demonstrates the exegetical reasons for the further development of the covenant of redemption with particular attention to Luke 22:29, Heb 7:22, Gal 3:17, and Zech 6:13. More than offering proof texts, however, the seventeenth-century English and continental divines relied on a scriptural logic that compelled them to recognize this doctrine in its individual scriptural parts. The divines understood the biblical term "covenant" to refer to an agreement between parties with obligations and promises for fulfillment of those obligations....