Missing the Trees for the Forest
John Murray writes,
In case you're not familiar with oak leaves, do a quick image search of white oak vs red oak leaves. From a distance, those leaves can look quite similar. It's only as you get closer can you tell that a white oak's leaves are rounded, while a red oak's leaves are pointed. Now add to your search a silver maple leaf and notice how similar a silver maple can look to a red oak, especially when trying to identify this while looking at the forest! Where there is legitimacy to standing back and looking at the forest, one must go in for closer detail when trying to identify the various parts of the forest.
The same is true in regard to the covenants of Scripture. If one merely stands back and observes the Scripture from the grand picture, it's easy to spot the continuity that streams through it. But to do this misses the trees for the forest! Yes, you acquire the grand story line, but the details of the story that make it so gripping can easily be lost. Who doesn't watch a movie or read a book for the second or third time and all of a sudden seize upon new aspects that they missed, details of the story that are easily passed over because they were at first focused upon the main narrative? Perhaps some details can't even be understood apart from knowing the completeness of the narrative (at this statement I can hear my Presbyterian brothers exclaiming case-in-point for infant baptism!).
I would argue that we see the story line carried through the covenants of Scripture. As the confession says "This covenant is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament" (19.3). This is our forest. The promise of the Covenant of Grace carried throughout the storyline of the Old Testament and inaugurated in the blood of Jesus Christ. But the Covenant of Grace (aka the New Covenant) is the magisterial tree found in the center of the forest. It isn't to be identified as any of the other trees of the forest (i.e. the Abrahamic, Mosaic, or Davidic Covenants), but is it's own unique tree in this forest. Being it's own tree, it's fruit should not be confused with that of another tree. Sure a silver maple leaf looks a lot like a red oak leaf, but those are two different kinds of trees producing two different kinds of leaves. Because they are both pointy leaves, their identities should not be confused. Likewise, various aspects of each covenant may contain many similarities, but it doesn't make the covenants the same.
The point often missed is this: we identify a tree by it's fruit, but what makes the tree produce that type of fruit is because of the type of tree it is. A good tree produces good fruit. We don't go to an orange tree to expect it to produce apples. We let the tree define the type of fruit it produces. The New Covenant needs to have the supreme authority in defining itself, not the Abrahamic. Because of the forest, the Presbyterian can't distinctly see the branches of the apple and orange tree cross, but when you step closer you can now see that the tree on the left produces apples, while the tree on the right produces oranges. Likewise the aspects of each covenant needs to be defined by it's own covenant, not by the covenants around it, even if it does look like their branches cross. The Abrahamic covenant includes all his physical offspring, but in all the explicit statements, the New Covenant only includes spiritual ones. It's only in stepping back from each tree do these branches get confused in the sight of the forest.
Maybe it's time to go those farther steps, no longer standing afar and viewing only the forest, but taking a closer look at the trees.
The writer knows only too well how persuasive the baptist argument respecting infant baptism can be made to appear and how conclusive it becomes to many earnest and sincere Christians. He knows also how difficult it is to persuade people, whose thinking has been moulded after the baptist pattern, that the argument for infant baptism is Scriptural. But the reason for this is that to think organically of the Scripture revelation is much more difficult than to think atomistically. (Christian Baptism, pg 2)I find this quote of Murray's interesting because as a Baptist who attends a Presbyterian church, I've had this accused of me. As I have wrestled with the issue of baptism, I was told that I spend too much time looking at the details and ergo "miss the forest for the trees." But I would like to challenge that notion. If one stands afar in order to see the forest, what you begin to no longer see are the individual trees. Sure, maybe you can see a few tree trunks, identifying separate trees at their base, but you can no longer identify various kinds of trees. It's our Lord who reminds us that you tell a tree by it's fruit, so if you miss the fruit because of the forest, it's time to go in for a closer look.
In case you're not familiar with oak leaves, do a quick image search of white oak vs red oak leaves. From a distance, those leaves can look quite similar. It's only as you get closer can you tell that a white oak's leaves are rounded, while a red oak's leaves are pointed. Now add to your search a silver maple leaf and notice how similar a silver maple can look to a red oak, especially when trying to identify this while looking at the forest! Where there is legitimacy to standing back and looking at the forest, one must go in for closer detail when trying to identify the various parts of the forest.
The same is true in regard to the covenants of Scripture. If one merely stands back and observes the Scripture from the grand picture, it's easy to spot the continuity that streams through it. But to do this misses the trees for the forest! Yes, you acquire the grand story line, but the details of the story that make it so gripping can easily be lost. Who doesn't watch a movie or read a book for the second or third time and all of a sudden seize upon new aspects that they missed, details of the story that are easily passed over because they were at first focused upon the main narrative? Perhaps some details can't even be understood apart from knowing the completeness of the narrative (at this statement I can hear my Presbyterian brothers exclaiming case-in-point for infant baptism!).
I would argue that we see the story line carried through the covenants of Scripture. As the confession says "This covenant is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament" (19.3). This is our forest. The promise of the Covenant of Grace carried throughout the storyline of the Old Testament and inaugurated in the blood of Jesus Christ. But the Covenant of Grace (aka the New Covenant) is the magisterial tree found in the center of the forest. It isn't to be identified as any of the other trees of the forest (i.e. the Abrahamic, Mosaic, or Davidic Covenants), but is it's own unique tree in this forest. Being it's own tree, it's fruit should not be confused with that of another tree. Sure a silver maple leaf looks a lot like a red oak leaf, but those are two different kinds of trees producing two different kinds of leaves. Because they are both pointy leaves, their identities should not be confused. Likewise, various aspects of each covenant may contain many similarities, but it doesn't make the covenants the same.
The point often missed is this: we identify a tree by it's fruit, but what makes the tree produce that type of fruit is because of the type of tree it is. A good tree produces good fruit. We don't go to an orange tree to expect it to produce apples. We let the tree define the type of fruit it produces. The New Covenant needs to have the supreme authority in defining itself, not the Abrahamic. Because of the forest, the Presbyterian can't distinctly see the branches of the apple and orange tree cross, but when you step closer you can now see that the tree on the left produces apples, while the tree on the right produces oranges. Likewise the aspects of each covenant needs to be defined by it's own covenant, not by the covenants around it, even if it does look like their branches cross. The Abrahamic covenant includes all his physical offspring, but in all the explicit statements, the New Covenant only includes spiritual ones. It's only in stepping back from each tree do these branches get confused in the sight of the forest.
Maybe it's time to go those farther steps, no longer standing afar and viewing only the forest, but taking a closer look at the trees.
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