The distinction between the covenant as a theological concept and as a metaphysical concept is one of degree rather than of principle.¹ The Bible is not silent about things metaphysical. If we use the broadest possible definition of metaphysics as the theory of the nature of being, the Bible must be allowed to set the perimeters of any such metaphysic. If the Bible tells us truth about God’s being, we are given most important metaphysical teaching. In this section we shall first treat the nature of the being of God, then the nature of the being of nature. viz. creation, and finally the nature of man’s being in particular and how these three “kinds” of being relate.

God, the Lord of the Covenant

The Aseity of God

One of the results of systematic theology that is metaphysically most profound and yet most basic is the aseity of God. The aseity of God “mean[s] that God is in no sense correlative to or dependent upon anything beside his own being. God is not even the source of his own being. The term source cannot be applied to God. God is absolute (John 5:26; Acts 17:25). He is sufficient unto himself.”² That God is self-sufficient and that he is the only being that is self-sufficient means that his being is unique. Everything else that is must, by virtue of God’s aseity, be dependent upon and derived from that unique being and be an altogether different kind of being. This is what is meant by the principium essendi or Seinsprinzip and by God’s archetypal being, which describes God as the arche,³ the primary source of being.⁴ This is also the starting point of Van Til’s metaphysic. Unless the being of God is seen principially in a class of its own (a se) at the outset of any metaphysic, we cannot do justice to the most basic biblical ontological and epistemological distinctions. Our only alternative to a biblical emphasis on divine aseity will be a “great chain of being” or an analogia entis in the sense Aquinas propounded that makes God ultimately correlative to creation or creation an emanation of the Godhead. But that is clearly not what the Bible teaches. “Fundamental to everything orthodox is the presupposition of the antecedent self-existence of God”⁵ and the self-revelation of his triune being. God’s aseity is both his most fundamental metaphysical description and the epitome of all other virtues.⁶ It is that “attribute of God” which is not, indeed cannot be, exhausted in covenantal (ad extra) terms.

The Triunity of God

If God is a se, he is completely self-sufficient in every sense: metaphysically, epistemologically, ethically, emotionally, etc. Traditionally, this doctrine of the aseity of God has been closely linked with the trinitarian being of God. It is only as a trinitarian being that God is, as Van Til says, self-contained, i.e. without need of complementation or fulfillment, without lack or want.⁷ God’s unity is correlative only to his own plurality and vice versa. More explicitly, it is the absolutely personal ontological trinity or trinity of God ad intra that is self-contained and this self-sufficiency and absolute independence makes the opera trinitatis ad extra possible without jeopardizing the uniqueness of God’s being and without endangering it of correlativism.

Even though as a triune person God entered into covenant with himself, the pactum salutis, we may not draw the conclusion that this is expressive of God’s essential being.⁸ Rather, as was said above, the pactum salutis fulfills an essentially soteric function in the divine will with respect to creation, i.e. is a redemptive, not ontological, concept. As such it is part of the economy of the opera trinitatis ad extra.

The Creator/creature Distinction

We have seen the unique nature of God’s self-contained triune being. We have also seen that this being is absolutely distinct from all other being in such a way that there is neither emanation nor correlativity. Being is not the unifying principle of a biblical metaphysic. In fact, in an important way, there cannot be such a unifying principle because there is no abstract notion of being.⁹

According to Van Til, any metaphysic worthy of the name “Christian” must bear out the biblical fact that “God has one kind of being, being that is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable and full of holy attributes. The universe has another sort of being, being that has been produced and is sustained by God.”¹⁰ So there is original being and derivative being, or, to speak with Scripture, the Creator and creatures (or creation).

In contrast with this, all non-Christian forms of metaphysics speak of being in general, being as such. They claim to be able to make intelligible assertions about the nature of being in general. Or if they do not claim to be able to do this they assume that such can be done. So, for instance, Aristotle speaks of the nature of being in general and affirms that it is analogical in character. He introduces the distinction between kinds of being, such as divine being and human being after he has made certain assertions about the nature of being in general. But thus to make assertions about being in general constitutes, by implication at least, an attack upon the self-contained and therefore unique nature of God’s being. A position is best known by the most basic distinctions that it makes. The most basic distinction of Christianity is that of God’s being as self-contained, and created being as dependent upon him.¹¹

What this means for metaphysics is that “Christianity is committed for better or for worse to a two-layer theory of reality or being.”¹² And this two-level ontology that comes to expression in the Creator/creature-distinction as its first order distinction is uniquely biblical - over against all realist or idealist accounts. “The doctrine of God’s being as qualitatively distinct from every other form of being is characteristic of Christianity alone. From the Christian point of view all other forms of metaphysical theory hold to a monistic assumption.”¹³ And monism is irrationalistic in so far as it postulates on one hand the full intelligibility of being via univocal predication and on the other hand the mysterious character or being because even monists recognize that in their view reality is fully penetrable only in principle. “Any one attempting to make predication about Reality as a whole without first introducing the distinction between the self-contained God and created man is bound to admit sooner or later that he is confronted with ultimate mystery.”¹⁴

This basic metaphysical distinction has trickle-down effects on all theological predication, including the entire realm of ontology and epistemology. It will consequently no longer be possible to predicate univocally on anything. A metaphysic that seeks to do justice to God’s unique being and bring him glory must first and foremost understand that God is in a class of his own, metaphysically speaking, underived, uncontested, and absolutely independent. Everything else exists but derivatively and dependently by and through his sovereign fiat creation in which he condescended and graciously called into existence ex nihilo that which was not and consequently has no claim on him.

A Covenantal Creation

Geerhardus Vos writes: “Originally God alone existed. He was known to Himself alone, and had first to call into being a creature before any extraneous knowledge with regard to Him became possible. Creation therefore was the first step in the production of extra-divine knowledge.”¹⁵ This is an attempt at describing the unexplainable move from God’s eternal solitariness to a temporal creation in which and with which he would be present. We can say and must say that if God’s glory consists not only by his glory’s being seen, but at least in part in its being rejoiced in (Jonathan Edwards), the act of creation was at least in part motivated by God’s desire to spread the knowledge of himself for his own glory. A creation that would know him in a covenantal relationship was what God designed and is what he still sovereignly pursues.

Under the previous heading we described God’s being as a se and absolute. We have emphasized that God in se is not covenantal because he is not essentially covenantal. What can we gain from the discussion of God’s aseity then? Initially, we seem to face a problem here. Metaphysically, we have found that a state of affairs obtains in which God’s being is unique in that it is underived and self-contained. When God decreed to create, he could not but call a creation into existence that is totaliter aliter, metaphysically speaking. What resulted was the two-layer or two-level metaphysic. Philosophically and theologically this has raised all kinds of problems that, by and large, have not successfully been overcome except by historically Reformed theology.¹⁶

The Westminster Confession speaks in language reminiscent of this philosophico-theological problem when it roots the idea of the covenant in this metaphysical distance between God and his creation: “The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him, as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.”¹⁷ We shall see whether the covenant provides a biblical solution to the problem of the metaphysical “ditch” between God and man as his creature.

Man - a Covenantal Being

After having raised the problem of the metaphysical distinction between Creator and creature, that “the distance between God and the creature is so great” that only an act of voluntary condescension on God’s part would be able to bridge it, the Confession adds that this condescension in fact took the form of a covenant. The Confession then elaborates on the CoW.¹⁸ There has been some disagreement among Reformed theologians on whether the CoW was something superimposed by God upon creation at a later point or something arising out of the metaphysical state of affairs right from the beginning. This ties in with the discussion of the necessity of the covenant of works. If God, after having called into existence his creation, also necessarily had to enter into relation with his creatures and can only do this by way of covenantal condescension, it follows that the covenant is consequently (though not absolutely) necessary.¹⁹ If God could have refrained from entering into communion and relationship with his creature, the covenant was not necessary in any strict sense, but rather instituted “graciously.”²⁰ But here we may not confuse the biblical-exegetical concept of the covenant with the theological concept of the covenant.

While it is certainly correct exegetically to speak of the CoW as something superimposed by God upon man as his creature, theologically speaking we can also describe the metaphysical state of affairs obtaining since the beginning of creation between God and man as “covenant.” Man is required naturally, i.e. qua creation and the resulting Creator/creature distinction, to obey his Lord and Maker. While the CoW was actively established by God at the point where he expressis verbis gave the promise and the threat to Adam respectively,²¹ the creature is “already subject to him by right of creation” and owes everything to him from “natural obligation.”²² While the covenant definitely adds an additional dimension to this obligation,²³ and while God was certainly not constrained to enter into a CoW with man, along with its promise, in the very act of creation, the imago dei nevertheless guarantees the susceptibility of man to God and his accessibility for God. It is a metaphysical ground of the covenantal relationship between man and God. As Van Til puts it, “In paradise Adam knew that as a creature of God it was natural and proper that he should keep the covenant that God had made with him.”²⁴

Thus, while we deny a collapsing of the CoW into a metaphysical necessity of the covenant of creation (or CoW), in the postlapsarian context we can readily affirm that no man is born outside of this covenantal arrangement that the Confession talks about. Van Til simply says that man is made “a rational-moral creature. He will always be that. As such he is confronted with God. He is addressed by God. He exists in the relationship of covenant interaction. He is a covenant being.”²⁵ Man is metaphysically constituted in such a way that he is dependent and derivative in both his being (metaphysics) and his knowing (epistemology).

1. That is, if we take metaphysics to be not autonomous but rather subject to biblical teaching as a subset of philosophy in its ministerial (rather than magisterial) use, as we need to understand it.↩
2. Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics (Phillipsburg [Philadelphia]: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2003), 24.↩
3. Cf. Louis Berkhof, Introduction to Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 98.↩
4. See below.↩
5. Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1974), 1.↩
6. Cf. ibid., 206.↩
7. Technically, the Reformed orthodox attributed aseitas as a personal property primarily and principially to the Father who is a se according to both essence and person. The Son and the Spirit are a se only in terms of their essence, their persons proceeding from the Father. But God in se can and certainly has been considered to be a se. Cf. Richard A. Muller, The Triunity of God, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, , Vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 253.↩
8. See above.↩
9. Against Heidegger’s attempt to find a univocal concept of Being (das Sein) underneath and beyond beings (das Seinende), we must reject all attempts to find univocity of being at the outset.↩
10. Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 30 (emphasis added).↩
11. Ibid., 30.↩
12. Ibid., 30-31. This cannot rightly be considered dualistic because the two layers or levels of being are not to be set in opposition to each other, but rather are causally and organically related.↩
13. Ibid.↩
14. Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 117.↩
15. Geerhardus Vos, Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2001), 4.↩
16. In most cases, it has lead to monistic worldviews in which the notion of abstract being is a univocal concept. In some cases, it has lead to a chain or scale of being (e.g. Aquinas). And in some cases, it has lead to an extreme dichotomy between God and creation that virtually cancels out all aspects of likeness between God and man, viz. the imago dei and general revelation (e.g. Barth).↩
17. WCF VII.1.↩
18. “The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.”(WCF VII.2.)↩
19. Meredith Kline, Lee Irons, Bill Baldwin, et al. are contemporary representatives of this position.↩
20. Francis Turretin is one of the representatives of this position. “Gracious” in this case does not have reference to the substance of the CoW because the substance is a principle of works and merit in Turretin, rather than one of grace. It has reference only to the institution and establishment of the covenant which was, on Turretin’s view, not absolutely necessary, but only consequently so.↩
21. Clearly, Turretin has a two-step, consecutive view of creation and covenant. Though he accepts the designation of the CoW as a “covenant of nature” which is “founded on the nature of man (as it was first created by God) and on his integrity or powers,” elsewhere he clearly describes the covenant as superimposed on, and therefore logically and temporally posterior to, the natural or metaphysical state of affairs obtaining from creation onward. Turretin says that “he added a covenant” along with rewards and stipulations. Since the rewards and stipulations were not part of the original situation after creation, but are essential elements of the covenant, the covenant is not necessitated in any metaphysical sense by creation. Turretin also states that God wanted “to assert more strongly his own right over man”, more strongly than it was already the case by way of creation. Here, too, the covenant is seen to be supplementary (Turrettin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 574). And finally, Turretin sees the “federal obligation” as superceeding the “natural obligation” of man, the two being seperate and not conflated (Ibid., 577).↩
22. Cf. ibid., 574.↩
23. “Man now excited by the promise of God can now certainly expect happiness,” not simply because of God’s goodness, but now even on the basis of a sure covenant, the basis of God’s faithfulness (ibid.)↩
24. Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1963), 91.↩
25. Ibid., 152.↩