The Mosaic Covenant

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WCF 19:1-2 - Law as Covenant vs. Law as Rule

Appeal has often been made to the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 19:1-2 as proof that the confession teaches that the Mosaic covenant is (in some sense) a covenant of works.  Sometimes this is made in a very strong form (WCF requires that the Mosaic covenant is a covenant of works), while other times it is made in a softer form (WCF strongly suggests a connection between the Mosaic covenant and the covenant of works).  Still, both positions will often claim that 19:1-2 requires that we say that the Mosaic covenant "is in some sense" a covenant of works.
 
This interpretation blatantly disregards an important distinction made in chapter 19 itself between the "law as a covenant of works" and the law "as a perfect rule of righteousness" or "a rule of life."  In my opinion, it simply reads onto the confession a covenantal paradigm that is foreign to its original 17th century mileu.  The point of the confession is to distinguish the way the law was given to Adam (as a covenant of works) and the way it was given to Israel through Moses (as a rule of life).  It is true that the Mosaic covenant republishes the law given to Adam, but (to speak strictly and precisely) it does not republish the covenant given to Adam.  As the confession states in 19:6, true believers can expect to recieve the blessings promised in the law when they observe it, "although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works."  The teaching of the confession is crystal clear: no sinner, since the fall (whether Abraham, Noah, or Israel in the Old, or believers in the new covenant), can recieve any blessings (temporal, eternal, typological, soteric, or eschatological) from the law construed in any sense "as a covenant of works."  The blessings we recieve are "not due to us from the law as a covenant of works."  This is the very thing that has been so strongly asserted by "Neo-Republicationists" in the tradition of Meredith G. Kline: Israel in the Mosaic covenant retained the blessing of the typological kingdom on the basis of a principle of works-merit opposite grace--that is, they retained blessings on the basis of their obedience to the law construed in "some sense" as a covenant of works (not grace). 
 
For some primary document justification of this claim, see this page. 
 
What follows is a collection of extracts from various expositions of the catechisms of the Westminster Assembly from the 17th and 18th centuries which make this distinction very clearly. 
 

Q. How can the moral law be a rule of obedience under the gospel, seeing it is said of believers that they are not under the law, but under grace?  Rom. vi. 14.

A. The meaning is, that believers are not under the law as a covenant of works, being delivered from the cursing and condemning power of the law by their Surety Christ. But though it be not a covenant to them, whereby they are either to be justified or condemned; yet it is still continued as a rule, by which they are to regulate both their hearts and lives, Rom. iii. 31. and vii. 7, 12. Tit. ii. 11, 12. 1 Cor. ix. 21.
James Fisher, The Westminster assembly's shorter catechism explained (1840; 1st Ed. 1765)

Q. 36. How does Christ sweeten this law to his subjects?

A. Having fulfilled it as a covenant, he gives it out to his true and faithful subjects as a rule of life, to be obeyed in the strength of that grace which is secured in the promise, Ezek. xxxvi. 27. (138)

Q. 19. How do they [justification and sanctification] differ in their relation to the law?

A. Justification has relation to the law, as a covenant, and frees the soul from it, Rom. vii. 4; sanctification respects the law as a rule, and makes the soul breathe after conformity to it, and to delight in it after the inward man, Rom. vii. 22; hence justification is a judicial sentence, absolving us from debt; sanctification. a spiritual change, fitting us for duty. (187)

Q. 13. Was Christ made under the moral law, as a covenant of works, or only as a rule of life?

A. He was made under it as a covenant of works, demanding perfect obedience, as a condition of life, and full satisfaction because of man's transgression...

...Q. 15. What would be the absurdity of affirming that Christ was made under the law as a rule, and not as a covenant?

A. It would make the apostle's meaning, in the forecited passage, Gal. iv. 4, 5, to be, as if he had said, Christ was made under the law as a rule to redeem them that were under the law as a rule, from all subjection and obedience to it; which is the very soul of Antinomianism, and quite contrary to the great end of Christ's coming to the world, " which was not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it," Mat. v. 17. (142)

Matthew Henry, The Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism (1846)

2. Q. Are we under that law, as a covenant ?

A. No: for a man is not justified by the works of the law. Gal. ii. 16.

3. Q. Are we under it as a rule ?

A. Yes: we are under the law to Christ. 1 Cor.ix. 21. (109)
 
Examples are countless.  More to follow, d.v.