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Pactum Salutis (Trinitarian) - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Council of Peace (Zec 6:12-13) (Beeke ch. 30 v.2)
        
        Zec 3:8 equates the branch with the servant
        
        Beeke states that the word "counsel" refers to God's eternal plan, and that the phrase "counsel of peace" can be understood to refer to a "covenant of peace.. (Beeke V2 590)
        
        2 parties
        
        However, this doesn't mean the Spirit was not present. It is not his role to ordain this counsel of peace with the Son, which is being described in this verse. Nonetheless, he will be required to empower the Branch, a focus which is not a part of this verse.
      - High Priestly Prayer (John 17:4-6,24)
      - Psalm 110:1,4
        
        "This promise reveals a covenant between God and Christ, just as God's covenant with David was a sworn promise. (Beeke v.2 586)
      - Hebrews 7:22
        
        "He undertook to pay his people's covenantal obligations to God." (Beeke V2 586)
      - Suffering Servant: Isaiah 48, 53, 52:13)
      - Luke 22:29-30
        
        "appoint" is a cognate of diatheke, which is used for covenant or testament. Comes right after "this cup is the new covenant in my blood."
        
        Essentially, I make a covenant with you just as the Father has made a covenant with me for a kingdom.
      - Romans 5:16,19
        
        Adam's disobedience that brought about the fall of all mankind stems from the covenant of works that God established with him. If God made a covenant with Adam that he and his posterity would experience life in his obedience, and death in his disobedience, shouldn't we think the same of Christ who God has appointed as the second Adam?
      - TItus 1:2 the salvation of God's people found in Christ was promised before the world began. Who was this promise made to at that time?
        
        2 Tim 1:1, 9
  - - - John 14:26, 15:26, and 16:13
- - - - "It is the triune God alone, Father, Son, and Spirit, who together conceive, determine, carry out, and complete the entire work of salvation. ( RD 398)
        
        The pactum salutis is "the basis of all covenants was found in the eternal counsel of God, in a covenant between the very persons of the Trinity. RD 397
        
        The benefit to the believer is in knowing that the covenant of grace executed and revealed in time and history nevertheless rests on an eternal, unchanging foundation, the counsel of the Triune God. The Father is the eternal Father, the Son the eternal Mediator, the Holy Spirit the eternal Paraclete. (RD 398)
        
        "The counsel of redemption is itself a covenant - a covenant in which each of the three Persons, so to speak, receives His own work and achieves His own task." (WWG 255)
        
        "Hence, everybody immediately and to the same extent does injustice to the work of the Father, the Son, or the Spirit, when he removes the foundation of eternity from time by loosening history from its anchorage in the gracious, almighty Divine Will. (WWG 255)
  - - - "This plan took the form of an eternal "promise" made within the Trinity when no one else existed." Beeke cites Titus 1:1-2 (245 ST)
        
        Beeke says about the Covenant of Redemptions "The persons of the Trinity entered into a solemn commitment..." (Beeke v2 595)
        
        Beeke quotes Edward Reynolds on the Trinitarian nature of the Covenant of Redemption in his 2nd volume of Sytematic Theology stating: "the Holy Scriptures reveal 'the consent of the whole Trinity' in Christ's office and work. The counsel engaged 'the Father's consent in his act of ordination' (cf. John 6:27), the Son's voluntary pledge to do God's saving will as 'a sacrifice for sin' (cf. Heb. 10:9), and 'the consent of the Holy Ghost, which did hereunto anoint him' and by whom Christ 'was consecrated, warranted, and enabled unto the great function." (Beeke V2 598)
        
        "God's one divine will engages each divine person according to the 'order' among the persons of the Trinity, so that each person has a distinct 'appropriation' of God's purpose, particularly with regard to how that purpose is worked out." (Beeke V2 599)
  - - - "Furthermore, biblical revelation identifies each of these persons as a thinking, willing, and active agent. Nothing exhibits this fact more than the covenant of redemption (pactum salutis) made between the divine persons in eternity, which is presupposed in the way that Jesus speaks (especially in John's Gospel) of his having been given a people by the Father who are and will be united to him by the Spirit after his departure." (303)
        
        "The persons of the Godhead mutually committed themselves to Golgotha from all of eternity in the covenant of redemption." 510
        
        "In the eternal councils of the Trinity (the covenant of redemption), the Father elected a certain number of the human race and gave them to his Son as their guardian and mediator, with the Spirit pledging to bring them to Christ to receive all the benefits of his mediation." (518)
        
        "The Holy Spirit brings the elect, through the hearing of the gospel, to faith; in doing so, the Spirit engrafts them into Christ." - Dennis Tamburello (The Christian Faith 575)
        
        "The Spirit has voluntarily bound himself in his activity to the Word spoken by the Father in the Son." 575
- - - - History accounting for the two different views
        
        Older Definitions of the Pactum Salutis
        
        Berkhof states that the majority of reformed theologians hold to the view that there there is a distinction in parties based on the Covenants. The covenant of redemption is between the Father and the Son, and the Covenant of grace is between the Triune God and the elect. (265)
        
        Berkhof says that there is a division of labor in the economy of redemption only as a "result of a voluntary agreement among the persons of the Trinity, so that their internal relations assume the form of a covenant life. (266)
        
        Berkhof states that the counsel of redemption refers to "the way in which and the means by which grace and glory and prepared for sinners." 268
        
        Berkhof outlines requirements and promises present for the covenant of redemption. In both the requirements and promises he lists the work of the Holy Spirit. Yet, somehow the Holy Spirit is excluded from pact that took place in a meeting behind closed doors, and according to Berkhof's assertions was only invited to participate in the covenant of grace. (269-270)
        
        1 more item...
        
        Berkhof's definition: "The agreement between the Father, giving the Son as Head and Redeemer of the elect, and the Son, voluntarily taking the place of those whom the Father had given him. (271)
        
        In 1525 Johannes Oecolampadius mentioned a covenant between the Father and the Son. In1638, David Dickson mentioned the covenant of redemption by name. (Covenant Theology 44)
        
        à Brakel states plainly in The Christian's Reasonable service that there are only two covenanting parties in the Covenant of Redemption: the Father and the Son. (à Brakel 252) In his section titled "The Covenanting Parties of the Covenant of Redemption" the Spirit is never mentioned. Furthermore, on his chapter on the Covenant or Redemption, the Holy Spirit is hardly mentioned in passing. While that probably points to a sign of consistency in his argument, it does seem to paint a less than exalted picture of the Holy Spirit in our Salvation from eternity past.
        
        Witsius sees the covenant of redemption as a pact between the Father and the Son where the Father appoints the Son as the mediator of God's elect, and where the Son gives himself as Surety for the elect. This pact is based on conditions of obedience and promises of glory belonging to the redeemer (The Economy of the Covenants 165)
        
        Newer Definitions of the Pactum Salutis
        
        "An agreement was made within the Trinity regarding the salvation of the elect, and this agreement is precisely what the covenant of redemption is meant to embody." Guy Waters (Covenant Theology 46)
        
        "The pactum salutis is the covenantal framework for the intra-trinitarian processions and missions that unveil the unified will of God in a threefold manner to share the love of God with fallen sinners. This love is manifest in the Son's Spirit-anointed covenantal obedience to the Father and the Son's outpouring of the Spirit upon fallen sinners." (Fesko TCR 145)
        
        Thesis: The view of seeing the Covenant of redemption as Christological is an incomplete view of this doctrine. It is better to understand the pactum salutis as Trinitarian while also Christocentric.
        
        Problems with the Covenant of Redemption
        
        Karl Barth and Robert Letham rejected the Covenant of Redemption because they believed it undermined the Trinity by eliminating the role of the Holy Spirt in certain formulations of the doctrine, or by leading to tritheism. (TCR Fesko 174)
        
        "Can we really think of the first and second persons of the triune Godhead as two divine subjects and therefore as two legal subjects who can have dealings and enter into obligations one with another? This is mythology, for which there is no place in a right understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity as the doctrine of the three modes of being of the one God." Barth (Beeke Vol2 599)
        
        Fesko believes that this concern of tritheism is unfounded because he asserts that this very concern is not relegated strictly to the pactum salutis, but to any doctrine of the Trinity.(TCR Fesko 174-175)
- - - - When we pay attention to all those Scriptural passages which former dogmaticians quoted as proof for the counsel of peace, or the pactum salutis, it becomes evident that they all, without exception, refer to the covenant which God establishes with Christ as the Head of the elect." (Reformed Dogmatics, Hoeksema 297)
  - - - "Therefore, Christ's atoning death for his people's sins was not a miscarriage of justice, but a revelation of the love of each person in the Trinity for lost sinners. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit joyfully concurred in forming this eternal plan at divine expense for God's glory." (Beeke V2 600)
      - "Part of the covenantal agreement includes the Spirit's consent and participation in the Son's mission, whether in His anointing with the Spirit at His baptism (Matt. 3:15-17), or Christ's subsequent outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:30-35). To be sent implies there is a sender. In this case, the Father and the Son send the Spirit to apply the Son's role as covenant surety. And if the Spirit is sent, then, like Christ, He is sent to do the will of the ones who sent Him." (TCR Fesko 173)
        
        "The covenant of redemption attests to the vital eternal foundation of the whole work of redemption in all its elements - cosmic, ecclesial, individual - and all its outworking in history." (The Holy Trinity Letham 318)
      - The members of the Trinity share the same will, but the execution of that shard will is in unique opposition to the other persons of the Godhead. (TCR Fesko 177-178)
        
        Thus, Scripture often speaks of the execution of the constitutio mediatoris, and while its execution is between the Father and the Son because it is not the Spirit's role to appoint the Son as the mediator, he nonetheless share the same will from whence it came. The Covenant of Redemption is much more than just the appointing of the Son as the mediator.
      - One of Letham's problems with the covenant of redemption is that he believes it can lead to the subordination of the Holy Spirit (The Holy Trinity Letham 319)
    - - Letham agrees with this point that while not explicitly mentioned, the Holy Spirit is nonetheless implicitly included in Jesus' receiving a people from the Father, being sent by the Father, and fulfilling the work that he had been given to accomplish. (The Holy Trinity 317)
        
        Similarly, Carl Trueman states that the Holy Spirit "agrees to be the agent of conception in the incarnation and to support Christ in the successful execution of his mediatorial role. (FHHCSH Trueman 214)