In this compelling study of Reformed reflection on the covenant of works, Professor Fesko takes us on a brisk but informative gallop through an impressive range of theological history. He opens the study by setting out the contrast between the importance ascribed to the doctrine of the covenant of works during the era of High Orthodoxy and the dismissal or rejection of the doctrine in Reformed circles during the twentieth century. Fesko's explanation for this contrast is that “despite claiming their professed commitment to Reformed theology, critics of the doctrine ceased to employ classic Reformed theological principles such as the analogia Scripturae (analogy of Scripture), rejected natural theology and were hostile towards Reformed scholasticism” (2). In the face of such modern theological hostility, Fesko aims to prove that “early modern Reformed theologians . . . constructed the doctrine in an exegetically careful manner by collating numerous biblical texts to conclude that God created Adam and entered into a covenantal relationship with him” (2). Rather than being a theological novelty born of a legalistic and scholastic turn from the pristine theology of the early Reformers, the covenant of works had, he argues, solid roots in the Patristic era and interesting parallels in early modern Roman Catholic theology.

Fesko's first chapter points out the covenant themes in the writings of a number of Patristic writes, before focusing more sharply on Augustine. His point is not that covenant theology, as it would be developed by later Reformed theologians, could be found within the Early Church: but rather that some of the essential building blocks of such later covenant theology were laid down there. Fesko draws attention, in particular, to Augustine's linking of the guilt of original sin to Adam's original covenantal relationship with God (13) and his assumption that the divine prohibition on eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis 2:17 had covenantal consequences (14). Following a brief excursus into the covenant themes of medieval theology, Fesko then touches on Reformation-era Roman Catholic writers, notably Ambrogio Catharinus whose “fully federal” conception of the “pre-Fall Adamic covenant preceded similar Reformed formulations by roughly forty years” (19). Fesko's contextualization of Reformed theological reflection alongside near-contemporary Roman Catholic reflection on similar topics enriches a field where studies are occasionally still restricted by traditional confessional boundaries. Fesko moves on from the likes of Catharinus to the more familiar figures such as Zwingli, Bullinger, and Calvin. Once again, his point is not that the Reformation-era Reformed theologians fully anticipated later reflection on the covenant of works, but rather that the building blocks for such covenant theology can be found within their writings. Fesko devotes particular attention to Calvin, on the basis that modern writers have often claimed him as an opponent of covenant theology. Fesko's point here is, once again, a nuanced one, namely that “Calvin does not advocate the covenant of works, but he explains a number of texts in a manner consonant with later exegetical arguments in support of the doctrine” (23).

Having laid the foundations for his study in the opening chapter, Fesko then leads his reader through the covenantal reflections of a large number of theologians, many of whom are either less well-known than they should be or are not usually associated with covenant theology. He begins with a study of the Scottish theologian, Robert Rollock, who was “one of the first Reformed theologians to employ the term foedus operum as well as articulate a fully federal concept of imputed guilt” (6). Fesko underlines here that “Rollock did not impose a theological grid over the Scriptures but instead first deduced the covenant of works through his exegetical labours.” The biblical roots of the covenant of works is something that Fesko underlines in relation to most of the doctrine's Reformed exponents. Fesko next turns to consider the covenantal theology of Jacob Arminius, viewed in the context of his Reformed colleagues at Leiden. Fesko emphasizes the closeness of Arminius's theology on this issue to that of his peers, and his role in disseminating the doctrine through his teaching, in contrast to the abandonment of the covenant of works by Arminius's Remonstrant successors. Fesko next focuses on James Ussher, discerning his influence on the development of the doctrine in terms of his willingness to enshrine the covenant of works in the Irish Articles (1615) and the reputation of his Body of Divinitie (1645) within the English-speaking world: both factors, Fesko suggests, which may have given the Westminster Assembly the confidence to codify the covenant of works in the Westminster Confession. Fesko uses a comparison between John Cameron and Edward Leigh to underline the fecundity and variety within early Reformed covenant theology. This variety was still accepted, he argues, within the Westminster Standards but found less place within the Helvetic Consensus (1675), shaped as it was by Swiss anxieties about the influence of Saumur.

The last three chapters of the book trace the loss of confidence in the doctrine of the covenant of works within Reformed theology from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Even so, Fesko highlights a number of theologians throughout this period who still articulated the doctrine in recognizable continuity with their early modern Reformed forbears. Fesko clearly takes a dim view of the later critics of the covenant of works, arguing that “(a) they rarely engaged primary sources; (b) post-enlightenment critical biblical methods of interpretation arguably shaped their exegesis and caused them to reject the use of good and necessary consequence to prove the covenant of works; (c) philosophical shifts such as the influx of German idealism washed out natural categories, and thus theologians such as Barth inverted the law-gospel distinction and replaced it with a gospel-law construction” (214). Even Barth's writing style comes in for a pummeling at Fesko's hands: “Many a student's eyes have glazed over in the face of Barth's thirteen bloated volumes with densely packed footnotes of tedious prose” (209). Fesko is certainly not afraid to lay his theological cards on the table. In sum, this book offers a clear and compelling argument, covers a remarkable range of historical ground, and treats an important theological topic in a surprisingly accessible way. Its impressive scope not only introduces the reader to some significant but less well-known Reformed theologians but qualifies it as a handy, if topically focused, primer to the history of Reformed thought as a whole.