This is my organized citations from A. W. Pink’s The Divine Covenants. The whole book is available online and that is how I collected these citations and corrected some typos and other minor errors.
It has been argued by Brandon Adams that the major theses of Pink was consistent with 1689 Federalism, which teaches that only the New Covenant is the Covenant of Grace. All the other OT covenants were not “administrations” of the Covenant of Grace. You will not find in this work the model of “one covenant, multiple administrations” that is associated with Westminster Federalism. Rather, you will find that all of the OT covenants “adumbrated” the “everlasting covenant of grace”, were subservient to the divine purpose of mercy and grace and contained gracious promises.
There are some statements which could be interpreted in favor of Westminster Federalism, which I have also included under the heading “Westminster Sounding Statements”. But in reading these we must keep in mind the main theses of the work and how Pink uses certain words, for example, “administration.” I do believe that a fair interpretation can be given to these statements without doing violence to the meaning of Pink, but I’ll leave that task to the interested reader.
One difficult statement for me to interpret has to do with the idea of “renewal.” For example:
Just as the various Messianic prophecies, given by God at different times and at wide intervals, were suited to the local occasions when they were first made, so it was in the different renewals of His covenant of grace. Each of those renewals—unto Abraham, Moses, David and so forth—adumbrated some special feature of the everlasting covenant into which God had entered with the Mediator; but the immediate circumstances of each of those favored men molded, or gave form to, each particular feature of the eternal agreement which was severally shadowed forth unto them.[1]
What does Pink mean by “renewal”? It seems to be “adumbrating” (an old word which he uses a lot meaning “disclose, foreshadow”) features from the Covenant of Grace. This is confirmed when we look to the chapters on those covenants which he mentions in the above citations. These covenants are subordinate to the ultimate “everlasting covenant of grace” and reveal it, but they are distinguished. The idea of “renewal” being a further adumbration of the Covenant of Grace is also confirmed in another quote:
They were all of them revelations of God’s gracious purpose, exhibited at first in an obscure form, but unfolding according to an obvious law of progress: each renewal adding something to what was previously known, so that the path of the just was as the shining light, which shone more and more unto the perfect day, when the shadows were displaced by the substance itself.[1]
Therefore, Pink probably does not give “renewal” the same definition as our Westminster Federalism brothers, which is to establish or administer (in the sense of WCF 7:5-6) the one Covenant of Grace. But the most difficult statement for me to understand is the following:
A period of sixteen centuries intervened between the Covenant Of Works which God entered into with Adam and the covenant of grace which He made with Noah.[2]
It was therefore requisite that the Covenant Of Works with Adam should precede the covenant of grace with Noah.[3]
Just as Genesis 3:15 was given immediately after the Fall, so we find that immediately following the flood God solemnly renewed the covenant of grace with Noah.[4]
Even some Presbyterians are hesitant to say that the Noahic Covenant was an administration of the Covenant of Grace, but Pink says that the Covenant of Grace, which I assume is the “everlasting covenant of grace”, was “made” with Noah and not simply a gracious covenant. In light of everything else that he says it seems to me that he may have the idea of “renewal” in mind, or maybe a gracious covenant and not the Covenant of Grace absolutely being made with Noah. But I’m unsure.
While I may have my doubts about certain points in Pink’s covenant theology, it very clear to me that his model is very different from Westminster Federalism. In fact, it seems very clear to me that he was a Baptist and provided counter-exegesis to passages as Genesis 17:7; Romans 4:11; Colossians 2:11-12 which are often used in support of infant baptism, although he did not desire to pick up the topic of baptism specifically.
If you can’t see the iFrame below, take a look here.
