Herman Bavinck: "To conceive of the work of Christ as the exercise of an office is to relate that work to the eternal counsel. He bears the name Messiah, Christ, the Anointed, because he has been ordained of the Father from eternity and has in time been anointed by him with the Holy Spirit."
This is well and good. But by what warrants may we say that the Son's eternal messianic appointment occurs per modum foederis, "by way of covenant"?Wilhelmus à Brakel: "It will be easier to comprehend this matter if we primarily consider the execution of this covenant rather than the decree from which it proceeds... [T]he manner in which the Lord executes it in this time state is consistent with the manner in which he eternally decreed it."
In other words, though the scriptures are relatively reticent to speak of the Son's eternal appointment by the Father in covenantal terms, the scriptures speak quite liberally about the Son's historical execution of that appointment in covenantal terms and this language, when coupled with other biblical teaching about the eternal nature of the Son's messianic appointment, constitutes sufficient biblical warrant for the doctrine of the covenant of redemption.Swain claims that "the New Testament speaks on a number of occasions of Jesus as one who is both recipient and mediator of the Father's covenant promises," notably in Luke 22.29, Acts 2.33, Galatians 3.16-29, 2 Cor 1.20-22.
Second, by means of "prosopological exegesis," the New Testament repeatedly employs Old Testament covenant language to portray the mutual dialogue between the Father and the Son regarding the latter's messianic mission and reward.
"Hebrews 1 uses the covenantal language of 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 1, and Psalm 110 to describe the covenantal honor bestowed by the Father upon the Son," namely Heb 1.5 citing Ps 2.7 and 2 Sam 7.14 and Heb 1.13 citing Ps 110.1. Cf.Christ's appointment through an oath (Heb 7.21).
Does the concept of a covenant within the Trinity compromise the unity and simplicity of God. John Owen does not think so:
[S]uch is the distinction of the persons in the unity of the divine essence, as that they act in natural and essential acts reciprocally one towards another,--namely, in understanding, love, and the like; they know and mutually love each other. And as they subsist distinctly, so they also act distinctly in those works which are of external operation... The will of God as to the peculiar actings of the Father in this matter is the will of the Father, and the will of God with regard unto the peculiar actings of the Son is the will of the Son; not by a distinction of sundry wills, but by the distinct application of the same will unto its distinct acts in the persons of the Father and the Son.
Similarly Wilhelmus à Brakel:
Since the Father and the Son are one in essence and thus have one will and one objective, how can there possibly be a covenant transaction between the two, as such a transaction requires the mutual involvement of two wills? Are we then not separating the persons of the Godhead too much? To this I reply that as far as personhood is concerned the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father. From this consideration the one divine will can be viewed from a twofold perspective. It is the Father's will to redeem by the agency of the second person as surety, and it is the will of the Son to redeem by his own agency as surety.Final word from Scott Swain
Because the Son is consubstantial with the Father, God's redemptive will cannot be limited to the Father; the Son too must the agent of God's redemptive will. Moreover, because the Son eternally proceeds from the Father in his personal manner of subsisting, so too does his personal manner of willing proceed from the Father. The Son's willing submission to the Father in the pactum salutis is thus a faithful expression of his divine filial identity as the consubstantial, eternally begotten Son of God.
