Righteous By Design
Covenantal Merit and Adam's Original Integrity
Published on 12. November 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
384 pages
978-1-5271-1157-8 (ISBN)
Description
How Might We Obtain Everlasting Life?
Although Protestants ought to have a ready answer about faith in Jesus Christ, the reasons explaining that answer run much deeper and relate to our status as God's image bearers.
Important historical issues inform how we understand the precise relationship of work and grace. Throughout much of the medieval period and into modern Roman Catholicism, many believed that because original righteousness was superadded to our nature, personal righteousness could be restored by grace after the fall, allowing us to merit everlasting life by our own works.
By contrast, the Reformation tradition has held that sin has damaged our nature so thoroughly that we could never merit salvation and must receive everlasting life by grace alone.
Righteous by Design is, on one hand, a thorough historical investigation of medieval and counter-Reformation theology,
exploring sources that have seldomly if at all been treated in Reformed literature. At the same time, it is also a theological case that original righteousness was natural to Adam before the Fall and that Adam
could have merited everlasting life according to the covenant of works. The payoff of this effort in theological retrieval is to underscore the majesty of grace in that sinners are right with God only on the basis of Christ's
merits. Thus, this book mounts a case for the Protestant law-gospel distinction through the lens of the imago Dei to highlight the sufficiency of Christ and his work.
Although Protestants ought to have a ready answer about faith in Jesus Christ, the reasons explaining that answer run much deeper and relate to our status as God's image bearers.
Important historical issues inform how we understand the precise relationship of work and grace. Throughout much of the medieval period and into modern Roman Catholicism, many believed that because original righteousness was superadded to our nature, personal righteousness could be restored by grace after the fall, allowing us to merit everlasting life by our own works.
By contrast, the Reformation tradition has held that sin has damaged our nature so thoroughly that we could never merit salvation and must receive everlasting life by grace alone.
Righteous by Design is, on one hand, a thorough historical investigation of medieval and counter-Reformation theology,
exploring sources that have seldomly if at all been treated in Reformed literature. At the same time, it is also a theological case that original righteousness was natural to Adam before the Fall and that Adam
could have merited everlasting life according to the covenant of works. The payoff of this effort in theological retrieval is to underscore the majesty of grace in that sinners are right with God only on the basis of Christ's
merits. Thus, this book mounts a case for the Protestant law-gospel distinction through the lens of the imago Dei to highlight the sufficiency of Christ and his work.
Reviews / Votes
"... Harrison Perkins tackles some difficult and nuanced questions over law and gospel, merit and mercy, and nature and grace. ... Particularly, his painstaking attention to nuances in medieval views on righteousness and merit, with their lasting implications, represents ground rarely covered by Reformed Protestants.
"Ryan M. McGraw
"
... an exemplary and much-needed work of constructive retrieval on the relationship between nature and grace.
"N. Gray Sutanto
"
... a powerful argument that the covenant of nature was properly meritorious of eternal life. Perkins's study is a stellar orientation point for the ongoing discussion on the nature-supernatural relationship.
"Hans Boersma
"
This is a deep and detailed study of God's covenantal relationship and promise to Adam, rich in exegetical, historical,
and doctrinal insights and pastoral reflections. Fruitful reading for anyone interested in this fascinating topic!
"Lee Gatiss
"
Perkins' volume showcases God's wisdom, goodness,
and grace in his works of creation and redemption, as well as our high human calling-from the beginning and finally realized in Christ. This book will enrich and bless its readers.
"David VanDrunen
"
The value of this book is found in its close engagement with primary and secondary sources arguing in favor of and alongside the Reformed confessional heritage since the sixteenth century on such topics as the covenant of works and the covenant of grace .... It is worth our time as pastors, theologians, and students to engage with this book and its concepts.
"Todd Rester
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Tain
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Christian Focus Publications Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 135 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
472 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5271-1157-8 (9781527111578)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Harrison Perkins (PhD, Queen's University Belfast) is pastor at Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards, associate online faculty in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, visiting faculty at Birmingham Theological Seminary, visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary, and author of 'Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction'.