Like his esteemed Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary colleague Professor David F. Wells, Dr. Meredith G. Kline knew where to join the spiritual battle in the modern world. Both men have called us back to our roots in Reformed theology: biblical, historical, and systematic. Even as Wells has chronicled and critiqued the incursions of a virulent secularism into the church, so Kline has perceived the importance of faithful exegesis in the explication of orthodox federal theology as the most powerful bulwark against such infiltration. At the center of that concern is clarity and depth in gospel presentation facilitated by articulation of the classic doctrine of the covenants, especially requiring a clear exposition of the covenant of works, as distinct from the covenant of grace.

It is this aspect of theological anthropology in the theology of Meredith G. Kline that I will adumbrate in this chapter. In surveying Kline’s rich exposition of this doctrine, I will seek to locate his views within the historical range of the Reformation and Post-Reformation theological tradition and demonstrate their consistency with the confessional standards of Westminster. In the recognition that this sketch is a small part of the early assessment of Kline’s corpus, it is neither definitive nor comprehensive.

Combining the familiar categories of the post-Reformation dogmatics of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms with an exegetically articulated biblical theology in the tradition of Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949), makes Kline’s covenant theology, in my opinion, the best recent account of the covenantal structure of the Bible, expressed in terms of the classic Reformed categories and structure. For all his creativity—especially in his descriptive vocabulary—his covenant theology clearly distinguishes works and grace in the various administrations of the single covenant of grace. The centrality of Kline’s concern to maintain the purity of grace in the Reformation doctrine of justification is reflected in such articles as “Covenant Theology Under Attack.”[1] All the while, in the great tradition of Reformed confessional and theological writing, his dogmatic assertions proved to be the fruit of careful biblical exegesis as a consummate Hebraist. He echoed Wilhelmus à Brakel’s contention:

Acquaintance with this covenant [of works] is of the greatest importance, for whoever errs here or denies the existence of the covenant of works will not understand the covenant of grace, and will readily err concerning the mediatorship of the Lord Jesus. Such a person will readily deny that Christ by his active obedience has merited a right to eternal life for the elect.[2]

Historical theologian Richard Muller has alerted us to the lack of clarity displayed by scholars since the early twentieth century regarding the origin and the theological content of this doctrine. Muller has convincingly demonstrated that two fundamental contentions of these writers are misleading. 1) The term “covenant of works” used by older Reformed theologians indicates a radical priority of law over grace. 2) The term “works” indicates a form of legalism. In both cases, the sources show otherwise as Muller summarizes: the “permanence of the original divine intention to ground fellowship in the nature of God and in the imago Dei.”[3]

The late systematic theologian John Murray (1898–1975) provides an example of this lack of clarity—although Muller does not mention  him—in his exposition of covenant theology, especially the covenant of works.[4] In self-consciously distancing himself from the historical exegesis and dogmatic conclusions of the older Reformed theologians, Murray appears to have paved the way, or at least opened the door, for the development of the virulent monocovenantalism that has emerged in recent decades.[5] Current theological reflection has noted the impact of Murray’s call for “recasting” the doctrine of the covenants and offers an alternative position more in concord with post-Reformation dogmatics and confessions.[6]

Meredith G. Kline has been among the first theologians in the second half of the twentieth century to notice the inherent dangers of an incipient, as well as a developed, monocovenatalism and to argue for a more orthodox, confessional account through the application of Reformed biblical theology. Already in 1983 Kline launched an exegetical inquiry into John Murray’s proposed revision of covenant theology, in his article “Of Works and Grace.”[7] Then in 1991 he dealt directly with Murray in “Gospel until the Law: Rom 5:13–14 and the Old Covenant,”[8] thus signaling a growing concern with what he called the “Fuller-Shepherd theology,” as it took its cue from Murray. Then in 1994 he popularized his concerns in “Covenant Theology Under Attack.”[9]

The importance of the covenant of works in Kline’s theology evolved throughout his writing and teaching career. While each of his published books represent that development chronologically, his magnum opus, Kingdom Prologue (KP),[10] stands at the heart of Kline’s articulation of the covenant of works because he revised it over the years as he expanded and refined the course that defined his teaching career, “Covenant-Kingdom Foundations,” in which he approached Genesis as the prologue to the entire Bible. From this course his biblical theology was spun. It was his stated desire that his federal theology be understood then from KP and his final book, God, Heaven, and Harmagedon (GHH).[11] These two volumes represent his most mature thought on the covenant of works,[12] clarifying his “more obscure and less mature formulations in By Oath Consigned.”[13]

Early in his career, however, Kline already perceived the importance of an orthodox understanding of the covenants in avoiding practical errors of all kinds. In a 1953 article in The Presbyterian Guardian, Kline emphasized how the unique pedagogical and typological nature of the Mosaic theocracy militates against using Israel as a model for the secular state.”[14]

1. Defining of the Covenants

Kline was careful to preserve the meaning of God’s redemptive activity by defining a biblical divine covenant in non-redemptive terminology to include the creation covenant with Adam in the general definition,

The evidence from all sides converges to demonstrate that the systematic theologian possesses ample warrant to speak of both promise covenant and, in sharp distinction from that, of law covenant. . . . This definition must correspond in its formal structure to one of the actual types of arrangements historically called “covenant” and at the same time be serviceable as a unifying formula for the totality of divine-human relationship from creation to consummation.[15]

Thus, he defined a covenant more broadly as “an administration of God’s lordship, consecrating a people unto himself under the sanctions of divine law. In more general terms it is a sovereign administration of the kingdom of God.”[16] He took issue with O. Palmer Robertson’s definition, “a covenant is a bond in blood, sovereignly administered,”[17] which had in turn been influenced by Murray’s definition, “The covenant is a sovereign dispensation of God’s grace. . . . From the beginning of God’s disclosures to men in terms of covenant we find a unity of conception which is to the effect that a divine covenant is a sovereign administration of grace and of promise.”[18] Defined this way it is understandable that Murray would balk at using the word covenant before the fall. But the temptation to do so emerged in the Fuller-Shepherd theology.

Furthermore, Kline understands the covenant relationship between God and man as essential to the imago Dei. It cannot be defined merely in terms of sin and grace.

2. The Nature of the Adamic Covenant

Kline’s doctrinal understanding of the Adamic covenant goes far beyond the narrow concerns of covenantal structure. Kline profoundly understood that God can only relate to man made in his image by way of a covenant. For Kline the twin realities of covenant and the imago Dei are constitutive of one act of creation. “Man’s creation as image of God meant . . . that creating the world was a covenant-making process. There was no original non-covenantal order of mere nature on which the covenant was superimposed.”[19] The nature of this primal covenant reveals the essence of biblical anthropology, as well as soteriology and eschatology. This is why the “Covenant of Nature,” or “Life,” is an appropriate title for this covenant, since the essence of man’s nature is always seen in relationship to his Creator. Law defines the character of God and its reflection in the imago Dei. Thus,

law constitutes the ground structure of redemptive covenant administration and thus . . . a definition of covenant as generically law covenant would be applicable over the whole range of history as is necessary in a systematic theology of the covenant. . . . the principle of law is more fundamental than that of promise even in a promise covenant. . . . The difference is rather that redemptive covenant adds promise to law.”[20]

It is in Christ that law and promise cohere, in whom the eschatological goal of all covenants is realized. German theologian Heinrich Heppe (1820–79) summarizes the Reformed doctrine nicely:

1.—As God’s creature man possessed nothing but the duty of obedience to God, without being able to raise any claim to enjoy blessed communion with Him. At the same time, as a creature in God’s image man was made capable of and appointed to such communion by God Himself, since God wished to ensure this to him by entering into a covenant relation with man. Consequently man as a creature in God’s image was created for covenant communion with God.[21]

Heppe’s first quoted source after his summary is WCF 7.1:

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.

So, Kline,

Our conclusion is, therefore, that Genesis 1–3 teems with evidence of the covenantal character of the kingdom in Eden. We have in fact seen that the covenantal identity of this creation order was given to it with its very existence, particularly in the creation of man, its head, in the image of God. The creational covenant will here be called “The Creator’s Covenant of Works with Adam.” By continuing the use of the term “works” we preserve an important advantage that the traditional name, “Covenant of Works,” has when combined with use of “Covenant of Grace” for redemptive covenant—the advantage of underscoring the fundamental law-gospel contrast. . . . Furthermore, though Adam could not enrich God by adding to his glory, it was nevertheless precisely the purpose of man’s existence to glorify God, which he does when he responds in obedience to the revelation of God’s will.[22]

For Kline, the idea of defining covenant in purely redemptive terms undermines not only the grace of the gospel but the eschatological goal of creation and redemption, since for Kline the Edenic “Covenant of Works was eschatological. . . . The change in covenants from Works to Grace does not change the canons of eschatology.”[23]

Was There Grace or Merit in the Garden?

In the last three decades of his career, Kline became more dogmatic about the importance of excluding the word “grace” from the definition of the first covenant between God and Adam in Eden. This became evident when he reviewed Fuller’s Gospel and Law in 1983.[24] While it is clear in the history of doctrine that grace, or similar words such as gratuitous, has been used by Reformed theologians with reference to the original covenant with Adam, Kline believed that care in terminology was the best defense against monocovenatalism and its threat to the grace of the gospel. Thus, he defined grace carefully. “The distinctive meaning of grace in its biblical-theological usage is a divine response of favor and blessing in the face of human violation of obligation.”[25] Hence,

Theologically it is of the greatest importance to recognize that the idea of demerit is an essential element in the definition of grace. In its proper theological sense as the opposite of law-works, grace is more than unmerited favor. That is, divine grace directs itself not merely to the absence of merit but to the presence of demerit. It addresses and overcomes violation of divine commandment.[26]

It should be remembered that those older theologians who have spoken of a gracious element in the Adamic covenant were not proposing a monocovenantal view of grace and works before the fall, but were using “grace” in a non-redemptive way to refer to undeserved favor.[27] Undeserved in this case was not due to sin, but rather to the creator-creature distinction and the utter dependence of the first man on his Creator’s favor in all of life. So A. A. Hodge comments on WCF 7.1,

This covenant is variously styled, from one or other of these several elements. Thus, it is called a “covenant of works,” because perfect obedience was its condition, and to distinguish it from the covenant of grace, which rests our salvation on a different basis altogether. It is also called the “covenant of life,” because life was promised on condition of the obedience. It is also called a “legal covenant,” because it demanded the literal fulfillment of the claims of the moral law as the condition of God’s favour. This covenant was also in its essence a covenant of grace, in that it graciously promised life in the society of God as the free-granted reward of an obedience already unconditionally due. Nevertheless it was a covenant of works and law with respect to its demands and conditions.[28]

Kline, in the tradition of Charles Hodge, enunciates precisely what is at stake in properly defining the covenant of works in terms of the works principle,

“For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). There was a first man Adam and a first covenant of works. And for the redemption of the lost world there is a second and last Adam, the Adam from heaven (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45–49), and another covenant of works. This second covenant was kept, this second man was obedient and his obedience under this covenant of works is the foundation of the gospel order. The redemptive program as well as the original kingdom order in Eden is thus built on the principle of works.[29]

Appeal is made to the fact that man as a creature is an unprofitable servant even when he has done all that has been required of him in the stewardship of God’s gifts. Or, stating it from the reverse side, man cannot possibly add to the riches of his Lord’s glory for God is eternally all-glorious; everything belongs to the Creator. Hence, the conclusion is drawn that in the covenant relationship we must reckon everywhere with the presence of a principle of “grace” and, therefore, we may never speak of meritorious works. The rhetoric of this argument has gone to the extreme of asserting that to entertain the idea that the obedience of man (even sinless man) might serve as the meritorious ground for receiving the promised kingdom blessings is to be guilty of devilish pride, of sin at its diabolical worst. With respect to the over-all structuring of covenant theology, once grace is attributed to the original covenant with Adam, preredemptive and redemptive covenants cease to be characterized by contrasting governmental principles in the bestowal of the kingdom on mankind. Instead, some sort of continuum obtains. A combined demand-and-promise (which is thought somehow to qualify as grace but not as works) is seen as the common denominator in this alleged new unity of all covenants.[30]

Because grace cannot be defined apart from this context of covenantal stipulations and sanctions and is specifically a response of mercy to demerit, it must be carefully distinguished from divine love or beneficence. [31]

When older theologians, such as A. A. Hodge, held some notion of grace in the preredemptive covenant, and when such references are put in context, there is a clear presentation of two different kinds of covenants. Nor is it to say that the use of the word “grace” in the Adamic covenant, given the present confusion over justification, is prudent. It would seem that since the word is used almost universally in Scripture of the undeserved redemptive favor of God towards sinners, the Westminster Confession is conscious of the wisdom in using the words “voluntary condescension on God’s part” (WCF 7.1).[32]

On the other hand, Kline understood that if we deny merit in the creation covenant, we will undermine it in the covenant with the second Adam and endanger the imputation of Christ’s active obedience. According to Paul in Romans 5:19, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” So “Adam, like Christ, must have been placed under a covenant of works.”[33] Charles Hodge affirms this reality, “By the offense of one all were made sinners. (4.) This great fact is made the ground upon which the whole system of redemption is founded. As we fell in Adam, we are saved in Christ. To deny the principle in the one case is to deny it in the other. . . . ”[34] So Kline argues,

In the offer of eternal life, so we are told, we must therefore recognize an element of “grace” in the preredemptive covenant. But belying this assessment of the situation is the fact that if it were true that Adam’s act of obedience could not have eternal significance then neither could or did his actual act of disobedience have eternal significance. It did not deserve the punishment of everlasting death. Consistency would compel us to judge God guilty of imposing punishment beyond the demands of justice, pure and simple. God would have to be charged with injustice in inflicting the punishment of Hell, particularly when he exacted that punishment from his Son as the substitute for sinners. The Cross would be the ultimate act of divine injustice. That is the theologically disastrous outcome of blurring the works-grace contrast by appealing to a supposed disproportionality between work and reward.[35]

The fear that a concept of “strict justice” may eclipse God’s condescension in the covenant of works is adequately addressed both by the clear assertion of the Creator-creature distinction, discussed above with reference to WCF 7:1, and by defining merit in a biblical way, in terms of the sanctions determined by God, as Lee Irons suggests, rather than importing the idea of merit expounded by late Medieval nominalism.[36] If the very creation of man in God’s image is covenantal, as Kline asserts, then the original nature of man inherently reflects the character of God. The terms of the original covenant involved the essential loyalty of Adam to that created covenantal relationship. Thus, rather than thinking in terms of either congruent or condign merit,[37] Kline suggests covenantal merit:

And according to the revelation of covenantal justice, God performs justice and man receives his proper desert when God glorifies the man who glorifies him.

To be so rewarded is not an occasion for man to glory in himself against God. On the contrary, a doxological glorying in God in recognition of the Creator’s sovereign goodness will become the Lord’s creature-servants. But if our concepts of justice and grace are biblical we will not attribute the promised reward of the creation covenant to divine grace. We will rather regard it as a just recompense to a meritorious servant, for justice requires that man receive the promised good in return for his doing the demanded good. Indeed, if we do not analyze the situation abstractly but in accordance with the created, covenantal reality as God actually constituted it, we will see that to give a faithful Adam anything less than the promised reward would have been to render him evil for good. For we will appreciate the fact that man’s hope of realizing the state of glorification and of attaining to the Sabbath-consummation belonged to him by virtue of his very nature as created in the image of the God of glory.[38]

Far from eclipsing the intimacy of paternal relation between God and man in Eden, the works relationship is one of love, “Bestowal of the reward contemplated in the creational covenant was a matter of works; it was an aspect of God’s creational love, but it was not a matter of grace.”[39] Even in what Kline believed was his less mature understanding of the nature of the Adamic covenant in relationship to grace, in his 1968 By Oath Consigned, he makes this distinction:

Grace, in the specific sense that it effects restoration to the forfeited blessing of God, is of course found only in redemptive revelation. But in another sense grace is present in the pre-redemptive covenant. For the offer of the consummation of the original beatitude, or rather the entire glory or honor with which God crowned man from the beginning, was a display of the graciousness and goodness of God to this claimless creature of the dust.[40]

Endnotes

[1] Meredith G. Kline, “Covenant Theology under Attack,” New Horizons in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church 15:2 (Feb. 1994): 3–5. The unexpurgated original of this article has only been published on the Internet URL: http://www.upper-register.com/papers/ct_under_attack.html. This was intended as a review of Daniel P. Fuller, The Unity of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992); Gospel & Law: Contrast or Continuum? The Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980). In this article Kline also references his own exegetical article, “Gospel until the Law,” JETS 34:4 (1991): 433–46, as well as T. David Gordon, “Why Israel Did Not Obtain Torah-Righteousness: A Translation Note on Rom. 9:32,” WTJ 54:1 (1992): 163–6. Cf. Meredith G. Kline, “Of Works and Grace” Presbuterion 9 (1983): 85–92.

[2] Wilhelmus à Brakel, Logike Latreia, dat is Redelijke Godsdienst in welken de goddelijke Waarheded van het Genade-Verbond worden werklaard (Dordrecht, 1700), translated as The Christian’s Reasonable Service in which Divine Truths concerning the Covenant of Grace are Expounded, Defended against Opposing Parties, and their Practice Advocated, 4 vols., trans. Bartel Elshout, with a biographical sketch by W. Fieret and an essay on the “Dutch Second Reformation” by Joel Beeke (Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1992–95), 1:355, in Richard A. Muller, “The Covenant of Works and the Stability of Divine Law in Seventeenth-century Reformed Orthodoxy: A Study in the Theology of Herman Witsius and Wilhelmus A Brakel,” CTJ 29 (1994): 76.

[3] Muller, “The Covenant of Works and the Stability of Divine Law,” 99.

[4] John Murray, The Covenant of Grace: A Biblical-theological Study (London: Tyndale, 1954); “The Adamic Administration,” Collected Writings, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977), 2:47–59; “Covenant Theology,” Collected Writings, 4:216–240; “Law and Grace” Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics (London: Tyndale, 1957), 181–201; “Covenant” in J. D. Douglas, ed., The New Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 264–8. The latter article does not even refer to a prelapsarian covenant.

[5] Bryan D. Estelle, J. V. Fesko, David VanDrunen, eds., The Law Is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2009), 16, 26, 253–8. See also T. David Gordon’s assessment of the influence of Murray’s incipient monocovenantalism on Norman Shepherd, Greg Bahnsen, and advocates of the Federal Vision, 257–8. It is interesting that both Murray’s and Fuller’s covenantal aberrations were forged in opposition to Dispensationalism. Murray was on almost every other theological topic an expositor of sound Reformed orthodoxy, as his Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955) and The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1977), among so many other works, demonstrate. 

[6] “Introduction,” Bryan D. Estelle, et. al., eds., The Law Is Not of Faith, 13, 15–17; T. David Gordon, “Abraham and Sinai Contrasted in Galatians 3:6–14,” 240–1, 252–8.

[7] Meredith G. Kline, “Of Works and Grace,” Presbuterion 9 (1983): 85–92.

[8] Meredith G. Kline, “Gospel until the Law,” JETS 34:4 (1991): 433–46.

[9] Cf. f.n. 1 above.

[10] Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Overland Park, KS: Two Age Press, 2000). Readers should be aware that this book has undergone several revisions since its first publication in three parts in 1981, 1983, and 1986. The first one-volume edition appeared in an edited edition in 1993, and the final version in 2000. Earlier editions are often cited in articles prior to this date. The pagination is not the same.

[11] Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven, and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006).

[12] See the disclaimer from the “Meredith G. Kline Resource” site, URL: http://meredithkline.com/?page_id=37: “Dr. Kline has changed or clarified his views on details of covenant theology found in By Oath Consigned (specifically on the questions of grace before the fall and whether there are curses associated with the new covenant). . . . He would rather people read Kingdom Prologue and God, Heaven, and Har Magedon to understand his mature views.” Cf. “Law Covenant” WTJ 27 (1964/65): 18, fn. 26. Meredith G. Kline, By Oath Consigned: A Reinterpretation of the Covenant Signs of Circumcision and Baptism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968).

[13] Meredith M. Kline to Richard Belcher, Jr., 27 July 1992, Orthodox Presbyterian Church archive, Willow Grove, PA.

[14] Meredith J. [sic] Kline, “The Relevance of the Theocracy,” The Presbyterian Guardian 22 (Feb. 16, 1953): 26–7.

[15] Meredith G. Kline, “Law Covenant” WTJ 27 (1964/65): 8, 11.

[16] Kline, “Law Covenant,” 17. Cf. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 1–7, 59.

[17] O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 4.

[18] Murray, The Covenant of Grace, 19, 30.

[19] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 92–3. Cf. David VanDrunen, “Natural Law and the Works Principle under Adam and Moses,” in The Law Is Not of Faith, 291–2. Cf. Lee Irons, “Redefining Merit: An Examination of Medieval Presuppositions in Covenant Theology,” in Howard Griffith and John R. Muether, eds., Creator, Redeemer, Consummator: A Festschrift for Meredith G. Kline (Greenville, NC: Reformed Academic Press, 2000), 266.

[20] Kline, “Law Covenant,” 11–13.

[21] Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics: Set Out and Illustrated from the Sources, trans. G. T. Thomson, ed. Ernst Bizer (1950; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), 281.

[22] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 20–1, 111.

[23] Meredith G. Kline, “Intrusion and the Decalogue” WTJ 16 (1953/54): 2, 3.

[24] Kline, “Of Works and Grace” 85-92. See fn. 11 above.

[25] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 112.

[26] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 113.

[27] Cf. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 2:578, shows that Turretin is concerned to protect the Creator-creature distinction enunciated later in WCF 7.1. He refers to God’s obligation in the covenant of works as a “gratuitous promise.” Cf. “Herman Bavinck on the Covenant of Works,” trans. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. in Howard Griffith and John R. Muether, eds., Creator, Redeemer, Consummator: A Festschrift for Meredith G. Kline (Greenville, NC: Reformed Academic Press, 2000), 169–85.

[28] A. A. Hodge, The Confession of Faith: A Handbook of Christian Doctrine Expounding the Westminster Confession (1869, repr. London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1958), 122.

[29] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 138.

[30] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 108.

[31] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 113.

[32] Cf. Justification: Report of the Committee to Study the Doctrine of Justification, Commended for Study by the Seventy-third General Assembly (Willow Grove, PA: The Committee on Christian Ediucation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2007), 27–33.

[33] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 108–109.

[34] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (1878, repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 2:121.

[35] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 114–5.

[36] Irons, “Redefining Merit,” 265–9.

[37] Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 471–2.

[38] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 111.

[39] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 112.

[40] Kline, By Oath Consigned, 36. See also fn. 12 above.

Gregory Edward Reynolds is pastor emeritus of Amoskeag Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Manchester, New Hampshire; and editor of Ordained Servant: A Journal for Church Officers; and author of The Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Preaching in the Electronic Age. Ordained Servant Online, August–September, 2024.