The Covenantal Nomism of Daniel F.N. Ritchie

Recently, I had an encounter with Daniel F.N. Ritchie of Northern Ireland on the Confessional Puritan message board. Ritchie is the latest author attempting to breathe life into the decomposing corpse of Theonomy and is also a devoted follower of the "one-man denomination" Brian Schwertley. In our very brief exchange, he accused me of slandering R.J. Rushdoony and other theonomic writers by pointing out that their monocovenantal "covenant of grace which is also a covenant of works" teaching constitutes a dangerous admixture of grace and law, a deceptive redefinition of the historic Reformed understanding of sanctification, and an undermining of the Gospel itself. The majority of my comments were deleted by Mr. Ritchie, who is the owner of said board, but the comment which he allowed to remain is as follows:

1. There was a pre-Fall Covenant of Works under which Adam, as the representative head of mankind, was placed and by which, if he had fulfilled its terms of perfect obedience, he would have received the reward of glorified life.

2. He broke the covenant and, with all those whom he represented, was subject to the penalty, which was eternal damnation.

3. God established a new covenant (not renewed the same covenant) with Adam which was wholly gracious, and not legal.

4. The demand of the original covenant (perfect obedience to the law) still required fulfillment in order for the promise to take effect, so Christ, acting as Surety (the second Adam), subjected Himself to the law in order to merit eternal life for His elect.

5. The Mosaic covenant served as a form of the original covenant - typologically for the Israelites (their possession of the Promised Land, which was symbolic of Heaven, was contingent upon their obedience), but was an actual covenant of works for Christ. Because it was typological only for the Israelites, it did not abrogate the Covenant of Grace (Dispensationalism), nor was it intended as a scheme of works-righteousness (Phariseeism/Judaizers).

6. This legal aspect of the Mosaic covenant is absolutely essential to the doctrine of the imputed active obedience of Christ, for without it, we are left with only forgiveness of sin through His shed blood, but without the positive righteousness required by God for eternal life. To deny the legal aspect of the Mosaic covenant, then, is to place the Christian back into a probationary state as was Adam with the threat of the law's curses constantly hanging over his head.

Thus, traditional Reformed theology is bi-covenantal: there is a Covenant of Works and there is a Covenant of Grace - two completely separate covenants. The former no longer binds the elect because they are in union with the One by whom it was fulfilled. "We are under grace, not law."

Rushdoony explicitly denied that the Adamic covenant was one of works and instead extended the Covenant of Grace back into the Garden of Eden. Rather than preserving the proper distinction between grace and law, he wound up mixing the two. In fact, he taught that the "covenant of grace is also a covenant of works." This monocovenantalism is also the basis of Federal Vision. It is my contention that those Theonomists who have gone into Federal Vision are really the ones who are consistent with Rushdoony's teachings.

BTW, nowhere in my book do I say that the theonomic writers deny justification by faith. It is what Rushdoony (and sometimes Bahnsen) did with "sanctification" that is the problem. There are numerous passages that I could quote from their works which show that their understanding of sanctification was more akin to "progressive justification." There were still "works required," according to Rushdoony, and Bahnsen wrote that "our entrance into the kingdom is dependent on attesting obedience." Gary North is also constantly talking about the necessity of "covenant-keeping."

I have had my views condemned as "modified Dispensationalism" and "natural law antinomianism" - neither of which is even close to the truth. What I am is actually an "ultra-nomian."

My view of the moral law is that it covers every conceivable thought, word, or deed, not only in one's waking hours, but also when one sleeps. Sinful dreams are just the product of a sinful mind, so even they are violations of the law. In order for one to be a "covenant-keeper," one has to keep the moral law in its entirety for his/her entire life. Anyone that thinks they can do that is deluded.

To this, Mr. Ritchie responded:

Your comments about "covenant-keeping", sanctification, and your novel view of the Mosaic covenant further reveals your deep confusion and antinomianism, and your dogma is explicitly contrary to the Westminster Standards (WCF 7 and 19). People who do not keep the covenant, and strive to obey the law, will be damned. Have you ever read the book of James? Perhaps you should go somewhere more congenial to your antinomianism.

Because I was banned from the Confessional Puritan Board and thus was not allowed to respond to Ritchie's comments, I will do so here. One will immediately notice his own latent antinomianism in the belief that a mere "striving to obey the law," rather than actually obeying it, constitutes "keeping the covenant." In order to make this assertion, Ritchie has to do the following: (1) reduce the demands of the law to a carnal level where he thinks he can keep it, or (2) claim that God's demand of perfect obedience has been abrogated. If he does the first, then he falls into the self-righteous trap of the Pharisees (not to mention the Federal Visionists); if he does the second, then he contradicts his own theonomic interpretation of Matthew 5:17-20.

Furthermore, while denying that Theonomy teaches justification by works, Mr. Ritchie nevertheless inserts this teaching into the second chapter of James when he makes "covenant-keeping" and obedience to the law necessary for salvation. After all, the opposite of being damned is being saved, is it not? In this, Ritchie is summarizing what Greg Bahnsen himself said when he defended the heresies of Norman Shepherd some years ago:

...[S]ome people will say James can't mean the word justify in a forensic sense, because then he would contradict Paul. Paul says we are justified by faith, not works. James says we are justified by works. So if they both mean "justify" in the forensic sense, there is a contradiction. Well, I don't think so, because in Galatians 5:6 Paul teaches exactly what James does. Paul says we are justified by faith working by love. We are justified by working, active, living faith. I think that's what James is teaching. They mean exactly the same thing. But... this has been a bone of controversy in my denomination even, because a professor at Westminster Seminary insisted James means this in the forensic sense.

Now… people who don't like that say, It is to be taken in the demonstrative sense. The problem is, the demonstrative sense of the word justify means "to show someone to be righteous," and that doesn't relieve the contradiction between James and Paul, because Paul in Romans 4 looks at Abraham as an example of how God justifies the ungodly. James is saying, Look at how God justifies someone demonstrated as godly. The contradiction is not relieved. And so what you really get — and this is crucial, this is a crucial point — modern interpreters who don't like what I am suggesting and what Professor Shepherd is suggesting end up saying that to justify in James 2 really means "to demonstrate justification," not to "demonstrate righteousness." That is, they make the word to justify mean "to justify the fact that I'm justified." And the word never means that. That's utterly contrived. It means either "to declare righteous" or "to demonstrate righteous." It does not mean "to justify that one's justified."

...I'm suggesting that the reason Paul and James are not contrary to one another is because the only kind of faith that will justify us is working faith, and the only kind of justification ever presented in the Bible after the Fall is a justification by working faith, a faith that receives its merit from God and proceeds to work as a regenerated, new person.

Both Bahnsen and Ritchie have misread the book of James, which does indeed use the word "justify" demonstratively, not soteriologically as Paul does in Romans. In other words, a man's obedience vindicates his claim to know God, but has nothing at all to do with his legal standing with God. Those whom God elected from all eternity, those for whom Christ lived and died, and those whom the Holy Spirit has regenerated will not be damned - period. Nothing they do or do not do will change that fact. As I pointed out in Chapter Five of Judicial Warfare (Second Edition, 2009):

By injecting works into the definition of saving faith and then ascribing merit to such faith, Bahnsen was left with an understanding of justification which was based, at least in part, on works. However, contrary to Bahnsen, the believer is not justified by his faith at all, but by the One in whom his faith is placed; faith is the means through which justification comes to the believer, but it is not the grounds thereof....

Furthermore, the faith through which justification comes is not a "working faith," but a resting faith which surrenders all and throws oneself on the mercies of God in Christ. In the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, "Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel".... Such a faith is “the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8) and full justification occurs the instant it is exercised. The good works that necessarily follow this saving faith flow from a regenerate heart into which the principle of obedience has been planted, but they are merely the evidence of true conversion and have nothing to do with justification itself. Rushdoony's suggestion that the "covenant of grace... is also a covenant of works" simply cannot be reconciled with Scripture, for the Covenant of Grace was a covenant of works only for Christ, not for the believer to whom Christ's perfect obedience to the law is already imputed....

The works required by the law have already been done, and therefore our own works have absolutely nothing to do with our standing before God. They flow from our salvation, but never do they contribute to it.

While the Bible does speak of the necessity of perseverance (Matthew 10:22), it is the perseverance in faith that is in view. In other words, it is necessary to maintain the imputed righteousness of Christ as the sole ground of our acceptance before God; once our own obedience enters into the equation, we are "fallen from grace" and are cut off from Christ (Galatians 5:4). The elect will, in fact, persevere in this faith, whereas the non-elect professor will eventually fall into the error of works-righteousness and either be drawn into a system which will accord with that error, such as Romanism or one of its myriad of imitators, or will become disillusioned with Christianity altogether and apostatize back into the world system (Hebrews 6:4-6).

I would like to thank Mr. Ritchie for making my point for me: Theonomy's doctrine of covenantal nomism is a modern variation of the ancient Galatian heresy which makes law-keeping contributory to, if not the basis of, our acceptance with God. As is typical of the Theonomists, especially those who have criticized their brethren in the so-called Federal Vision movement, Ritchie denies what he affirms, and affirms what he denies. Also, like so many of his fellows, he doesn't seem aware that the Reformed churches have dealt with this issue of antinomianism, law-keeping, justification, sanctification, etc. long ago. It was called the "Marrow controversy" in the Eighteenth Century, and resulted from the publication of Edward Fisher's The Marrow of Modern Divinity. This important work was written in the form of a dialogue between Evangelista, a minister of the Gospel, and Neophytus, a young Christian, with extensive rebuttals of their two opponents, Nomista, a legalist, and Antinomista, an antinomian. Not only did Fisher teach the very same doctrine of the law that I have presented in my own book, but the eminent Thomas Boston elaborated further thereon in his explanatory notes. It is interesting to note that those in the Church of Scotland who opposed Fisher's work repeatedly assailed its supporters with the charge of antinomianism for the very same reason that Ritchie has now assailed me (and, I might add, the same reason the Judaizers assailed the Apostle Paul in the First Century). Indeed, "there is nothing new under the sun." I would encourage everyone to obtain a copy of this book and read it carefully. If the Reformed churches of today would cease viewing Theonomy, Federal Vision, and other related movements as novelties, instead of a resurgence of the exploded heresies of the past, they would not have to convene committees and counsels to decide whether they should expel these "disturbers" from their flocks.

ADDITIONAL NOTE (added 2 August 2010): Daniel Ritchie has deleted the above-referenced conversation from his message board. Fully expecting that he would eventually do this in order to suppress his incriminating comment that "people who do not keep the covenant... will be damned," I posted a screen-shot HERE. The cache of this page that was available through Google has been removed.

ADDITIONAL NOTE (added 22 October 2010): Stephen Halbrook attempted to defend Ritchie from the charge of covenantal nomism on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3a81nkZb7g While denying that Ritchie is teaching "justification on account of good works," Halbrook does admit that Theonomists such as Ritchie believe that "the Covenant of Grace is conditional and faith is the condition of the covenant." As I discussed in Chapter Five of Judicial Warfare, Bahnsen and Rushdoony in particular adopted Daniel P. Fuller's redefinition of faith as "obedience." According to Bahnsen, faith and obedience are "two sides of the same coin." Elsewhere he wrote, "Continued blessing for Adam in paradise, Israel in the promised land, and the Christian in the kingdom has been seen to be dependent upon persevering obedience to God's will as expressed in His law." Contrary to Halbrook, such a teaching is a departure from the Reformed teaching that obedience flows out of, and is therefore distinct, from saving faith. A Christian's standing before God is not conditioned on his obedience, but on Christ's obedience in his behalf. To insist, as Ritchie does, that a Christian's eternal destiny depends on his "keeping the covenant" and "striving to obey the law," is a clear perversion of the Gospel.