Differing Views on the Two Covenants
Being deeply impressed with the events of the past year, Ellen White wrote several articles to be printed in the Review in early 1890. Repeatedly she drew attention to the time in which the Church was living—the day of atonement. She had recognized the message sent through Jones and Waggoner as the law and gospel combined. She saw them presenting the great truths of justification by faith combined with the cleansing of the sanctuary. God was seeking not only to forgive His people for their sins, but also to cleanse them from their sins by blotting them out, and thus prepare them to stand in the day of His coming. This preparation required a heart work, an individual cooperation with the great High Priest, which would be accomplished if the light shining upon them were fully accepted and brought into their experience. But if light was refused, the showers of the latter rain would be withdrawn:We are in the day of atonement, and we are to work in harmony with Christ’s work of cleansing the sanctuary from the sins of the people. Let no man who desires to be found with the wedding garment on, resist our Lord in his office work. As he is, so will his followers be in this world. We must now set before the people the work which by faith we see our great High-priest accomplishing in the heavenly sanctuary. Those who do not sympathize with Jesus in his work in the heavenly courts … are joining with the enemy of God and man in leading minds away from the truth and work for this time.
Christ is in the heavenly sanctuary, and he is there to make an atonement for the people. He is there to present his wounded side and pierced hands to his Father. He is there to plead for his Church that is upon the earth. He is cleansing the sanctuary from the sins of the people. What is our work? It is our work to be in harmony with the work of Christ. By faith we are to work with him, to be in union with him.
The mediatorial work of Christ, the grand and holy mysteries of redemption, are not studied or comprehended by the people who claim to have light in advance of every other people on the face of the earth. Were Jesus personally upon earth, he would address a large number who claim to believe present truth, with the words he addressed to the Pharisees: “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” The most learned of the Jewish scribes did not discern the relation of Christ to the law; they did not comprehend the salvation which was offered. … As long as we are content with our limited knowledge, we are disqualified to obtain rich views of truth. We cannot comprehend the facts connected with the atonement, and the high and holy character of God’s law. The church to whom God has entrusted the treasures of truth needs to be converted. If we are blessed, we can bless others; but if we do not receive the Holy Spirit in our hearts, we cannot give forth light to others.
Christ is cleansing the temple in heaven from the sins of the people, and we must work in harmony with him upon the earth, cleansing the soul temple from its moral defilement.
The people have not entered into the holy place, where Jesus has gone to make an atonement for his children. We need the Holy Spirit in order to understand the truths for this time; but there is spiritual drought in the churches, …
Meetings should be held in every church for solemn prayer and earnest searching of the word to know what is truth. Take the promises of God, and ask God in living faith for the outpouring of his Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit is shed upon us, marrow and fatness will be drawn from the word of God. … Men must advance in the path of duty from light to a greater light, for light unimproved becomes darkness, and a means of treasuring up wrath for themselves against the day of wrath. …
When the churches become living, working churches, the Holy Spirit will be given in answer to their sincere request. … The Bible will be regarded as a charter from heaven. … Then the windows of heaven will be open for the showers of the latter rain. The followers of Christ will be united in love. …
God has given to his people the light of great and solemn truths. He has opened to their understanding the mysteries of salvation; and if these truths are not improved, the favor of God will be withdrawn.
Ellen White sensed the urgency of the times. Unfortunately, while all heaven was busy seeking to prepare the church to give the loud cry to the world, the brethren at the heart of the work were embroiled in controversy over what they felt was dangerous doctrine. As a result of a deeper understanding of the cleansing of the sanctuary, Jones and Waggoner had come to see the two covenants in a light that differed from the common view. This gave rise for great concern among many of the brethren.
The Ministerial Institute that started in November 1889 with A. T. Jones teaching Bible and history for the first two-month term had just ended. As Waggoner took up the work for the second three-month term, teaching Bible classes, church history and Hebrew, controversy erupted again. Waggoner had been teaching on the book of Isaiah, but decided to take up the issue of the covenants. His change in plans may have resulted from questions arising on the topic of the covenants due to the Sabbath School lesson quarterly, which he had authored. At any rate, Waggoner’s change in plans was quickly altered.
The Two Covenants
Although much has been written about the controversy over the law in Galatians that took place at the Minneapolis General Conference, the controversy over the covenants was perhaps of greater significance. For both parties involved, the law in Galatians and the two covenants were closely connected, and thus the acceptance of a particular view on the one issue required the acceptance of the same view on the other issue.Waggoner had mentioned the covenants in his series of articles in the Signs that ran for nine weeks during the summer of 1886. Butler responded with his book, The Law in the Book of Galatians, resulting in increased controversy at the 1886 General Conference. Waggoner’s response, The Gospel in the Book of Galatians, was distributed at the Minneapolis Conference. The main issue, at that point, was the identification of the law spoken of in Galatians chapter 3, but, the underlying arguments reveal that both men were dealing with the issue of the covenants as well.
During the course of Waggoner’s presentations at Minneapolis, he spent some time covering the covenants. On Friday, October 19, 1888, he compared passages of scripture in Acts, Romans and in the second and third chapters of Galatians. According to the Daily Bulletin “his purpose was to show that the real point of controversy was justification by faith in Christ, which faith is reckoned to us as to Abraham, for righteousness. The covenant and promises to Abraham are the covenant and promises to us.” W. C. White noted that Waggoner compared “the covenant with Abraham with the Second [or New] Covenant. They are the same.” On the following Sunday morning, Waggoner’s eighth lecture was titled: “Two Covenants, and Their Relation to the Law.” It is quite possible, based on J. H. Morrison’s response, that Waggoner took up Galatians chapter 4 and spoke on the allegory of Sarah and Hagar, maintaining that the old covenant, symbolized by Hagar, is a condition of salvation by works, which was not limited to an Old Testament dispensation. For the same reason the new covenant, symbolized by Sarah, represents salvation by faith in Christ alone, and was just as accessible in Old Testament times as it is today. Waggoner was always clear that there were not two dispensations (saved by works in the Old Testament and saved by faith in the New Testament), but that salvation has always been by faith in Christ. The issue is not a time period, but the condition of the heart.
J. H. Morrison responded to Waggoner’s lectures claiming “we had always believed in ‘Justification by faith’ and were children of the free woman.” This was clearly an allusion to the covenant allegory of Galatians.
Although we do not have a transcript of Waggoner’s presentations at Minneapolis, we do know what his position was on the covenants. His book Glad Tidings was based on notes that his wife had taken down of his sermons at the 1888 Conference. He also published his views in both Bible Readings and the Senior Sabbath School Quarterly in the early part of 1889, and he presented extensively on the covenants at the 1890 Ministerial Institute, which according to Dan Jones was “similar to what he presented at Minneapolis.”
Ellen White noted that during the spring of 1889 she attended a meeting “where the subject of the two covenants was presented by Elder A. T. Jones.” It is clear that there were brethren who were in disagreement with Jones’ view, for she adds: “I could not be pleased with the spirit that was manifested by Elder Underwood. He seemed to ask questions not for the sake of obtaining light, but of bringing in confusion and perplexity by questions he did not believe himself.”
Neither are we left with any doubt as to where G. I. Butler, Uriah Smith, R. C. Porter, and Dan Jones stood in regard to the covenants either. All these men disagreed with Jones and Waggoner on certain points and made it clear publicly. Smith had run two series of articles on the covenants in 1887; one in the Review, and the other in the Bible Echo. Smith also published the book The Two Covenants during this same time period. Both Porter and Smith gave public talks at the 1890 Ministerial Institute, which were written down and are extant today. Dan Jones also had much to say about the covenants in his correspondence during the early part of 1890.
But why so much contention? What were the differences in the views that were held on this topic? As mentioned before, Jones and Waggoner understood that the law in Galatians was connected to the covenants, that in turn were an intrinsic part of the doctrine of justification by faith. Those who opposed Jones and Waggoner saw little connection between the covenants and justification by faith. They all claimed to believe in justification by faith and felt that Jones and Waggoner were over-emphasizing it, using the “much-vaunted doctrine” as a front to push their ideas on the law in Galatians, and the covenant questions.
Points of Agreement
First, it is important to establish on what points there was mutual agreement. Both parties believed that man was to be a keeper of all the commandments of God, including the Seventh-day Sabbath, and that the terms under both covenants required this. The question had more to do with how man was to keep the commandments. Neither party disagreed that God had made a covenant with Abraham which defined the terms of salvation to the end of time. Both saw that the covenants had been made with Israel, and not with the Gentiles. Neither stated that God had made a mistake in making any covenant. Both parties believed that God desired a people who would rightly represent Him on this earth and be the basis for the evangelism of all nations. As Waggoner put it: “But will there ever be any people on the earth who will have attained to that perfection of character? Indeed there will be. … When the Lord comes there will be a company who will be found ‘complete in Him’ … To perfect this work in the hearts of individuals, and to prepare such a company, is the work of the Third Angel’s Message.”Although it can be said that there was mutual agreement on these points, according to both parties’statements, opponents often questioned whether Jones and Waggoner really believed what they taught, and whether their doctrine did not, in fact, undermine the very positions they claimed to support. Many of the brethren felt that Jones and Waggoner were teaching doctrines that led to the same conclusion as Dispensationalists—that the ten commandments had been done away with and Sunday, therefore, was the new day of worship. Jones and Waggoner, on the other hand, suggested that the brethren had formed their doctrine, not on sound biblical exegesis, but on a line of reasoning formed only to try to counter the positions taken by Dispensationalists. It is clear that this was in fact the case, as we read Uriah Smith’s introductory remarks found in his work, The Two Covenants:
The subject of the covenants is becoming a theme of particular interest to Seventh-day Adventists at the present time, because it is just now considered a favorite point of attack by some of those who oppose the doctrine of the perpetuity of the ten commandments, and the still binding obligation of the original Sabbath. Having exhausted every other source of theoretical opposition to the Sabbath in their futile efforts to overthrow it, they now claim that in the doctrine of the covenants they find conclusive evidence that the ten commandments have been superceded by something better. … Briefly stated, then, their claim is this: That the ten commandments constituted the first or old covenant; that that covenant was faulty and has been done away.
Galatians 3:19 was often quoted by Dispensationalists to prove that the ten commandments were added at Mt. Sinai and were binding only until Christ (the seed) was to come: “Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” Galatians 3:24 was then quoted as a final proof-text asserting that the commandments were no longer binding since Christ’s death: “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by faith.” It was claimed that Christians were now justified by faith and not by the law.
Old View
In response to such teachings, Adventists, under the leadership of Uriah Smith, G. I. Butler and others, taught a view on the covenants that they felt answered all the objections coming from the Christian world. Smith taught that there was really only one plan, only one covenant that God had made with Abraham which He carried out in two phases, the old and the new covenant: “In the accomplishment of that promise which He gave to Abraham there were two stages, two dispensations, and by each of these He was carrying on the same idea.” The first stage or dispensation was that of the old covenant; when God entered into a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai. Here the people promised to keep the ten commandments and whatever else the Lord was to require: “They, in other words, signed in blank all that the Lord should give them, and the Lord could fill in what He pleased; and whatever He did fill in it that would be a part of the covenant to which they had agreed.” Thus God instituted the ceremonial law and the sanctuary service “that sin might abound.” This was the only law referred to in Galatians, especially the schoolmaster that led to Christ, the very core and essence of the old covenant.Uriah Smith defined the term “covenant” by quoting from Webster’s dictionary which stated that a covenant was “‘a mutual agreement of two or more persons or parties, in writing and under seal, to do or to refrain from, some act or thing; a contract; stipulation.’” Thus the old covenant made at Sinai was a “formal and mutual agreement between God and [Israel], based upon mutual promises. … The people said, We will keep God’s law [both moral and ceremonial]. God said, Then I will make you a kingdom of priests. … This was the agreement or covenant made between them.” Webster’s secondary definition of the term covenant—“‘a writing containing the terms of agreement between two parties’”—was used to explain why the ten commandments are called a covenant; “they were simply the basis of that agreement,” but not the actual covenant itself.
Uriah Smith saw that there were “three things to be accomplished by God in making this [old] covenant.” First, “to carry out as it pertained to that time the promise of Abraham.” That is, that the promise to Abraham was that his “literal seed” the children of Israel, would occupy Canaan. Second, that God might have a “holy people through whom He might manifest His name.” And third, that through the “system of ceremonies, and that system of worship which confined them to one place,” the people would be hedged in “from the nations of the world around them” and thus “when the seed, Christ, should come, His genealogy could be traced back, without any spirit of doubt from those Jews, to Abraham.” Smith taught that the promises made to Abraham, pertaining to what Smith called the first stage, were “secured through this [old] covenant” when “Israel were put in possession of that land as God had promised.”
Uriah Smith maintained that the fault with the old covenant lay not with God or necessarily with the people, but with the promises, for they “were the best promises that God could make at that time.” The problem was that the old covenant “was not able to carry out the matter to the final consummation” because “it did not have the right sacrifices, only the blood of animals.” Thus when Christ came to earth, the old covenant of ceremonial laws were done away with, and the new covenant was put into place by the sacrifice of Christ who was the seed to come. The new covenant supplied the deficiency of the old by providing a sacrifice that would take away sin. Smith explained Paul’s allegory in Galatians chapter 4, by suggesting that the old covenant “gendered to bondage” only when the Jews desired to continue practicing circumcision and keeping the ceremonial law. Because “they disbelieved on Christ … the Jewish people, the literal seed, corresponded to Ishmael; that Christ, the true seed, corresponded to Isaac.”
Most of Smith’s explanations had virtually one goal in mind, to convince the Christian world that the old covenant was the ceremonial law—the only law to which the book of Galatians was speaking—and that the ten commandments were still binding, including the Sabbath.
Jones’ and Waggoner’s View
In contrast, Jones’ and Waggoner’s understanding of the covenants was not based on opinions formed in an attempt to defend against false accusations from the Christian world—that the ten commandments were done away with—but rather based on an understanding of the everlasting gospel which permeates the entire Bible. They saw the two covenants not as representing two dispensations or matters of time—the Old and New Testament, but rather representing the condition of the heart, regardless of what time period in which a person had lived. Man can today be just as much under the old covenant as were the people who stood at Mt Sinai. Waggoner taught that the second or new covenant “existed before the covenant was made at Sinai,” and in fact “the second covenant existed in every feature long before the first [or old], even from the days of Adam.” It was then that the “plan of salvation was developed.”The covenant and the promise to Abraham were one and the same. God promised Abraham and all nations through him (“all families of the earth”), that He would give men the whole earth made new after having made them free from the curse. This promise included everlasting life and the making righteous of all who believe, for one must be righteous to inherit that land. This everlasting covenant “God confirmed in Christ, Gal. 3:17 … by an oath, in addition to the promise. These ‘two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie,’made the sacrifice of Christ as efficacious in the days of Abraham and Moses as it is now.” God had pledged Himself, and His own existence, to our salvation in Jesus Christ. His life for ours, if we are lost while believing in Him.
Unlike Smith and Butler, who defined the word “covenant” by going to Webster’s dictionary alone, Waggoner saw that “neither of [Webster’s] definitions is extensive enough to cover all the uses of the word in the Bible. … It is only another instance of the impossibility of a perfect comparison between divine and human things.” The “main point is to understand just what is meant in each instance, and this the Scriptures themselves enable us readily to do.” Thus, Jones and Waggoner allowed the Bible to define its own terms. For example, “In Gen. 9:9-16 the word ‘covenant’ is used with reference to a promise of God [made to every beast of the earth], given without any condition expressed or implied.”
In the same way, the “everlasting covenant” made with Abraham was not a contract, in the sense of two equal parties making an agreement—it was the promise of God to Abraham and his response of faith. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. Abraham gave more than a mental assent. He appreciated and treasured the promises of God, and in this sense kept the covenant with God, thus becoming the father of all them that believe (Romans 4:11). The “new covenant” or “second covenant” was really the same covenant that God had already made with Abraham. It was called such only because it was the second covenant made with Israel as a nation, and new to them in contrast to the old covenant. “There is no blessing that can be gained by virtue of the second covenant that was not promised to Abraham. And we, with whom the second covenant is made, can share the inheritance which it promises only by being children of Abraham (Galatians 3:29); all who are of faith are the children of Abraham.”
But what about the first covenant? Why did God enter into a different covenant with Israel than he had with Abraham? Waggoner explained that according to Exodus 6:2-8, God purposed to set Israel free from their Egyptian bondage in fulfillment of His covenant with Abraham. When He brought them to the foot of Mount Sinai, He reminded them of what He had done to the Egyptians and how He had borne them on eagle’s wings. God desired the people to enter into the same covenant of faith that He had made with Abraham, but the people had failed to trust Him at the Red Sea, in the giving of manna, and at the waters of Meribah (Psalms 106). Now, at Mount Sinai, the Lord tested them again, referring to the covenant given to Abraham long before, and He exhorted them to keep it, assuring them of the results. The covenant with Abraham was a covenant of faith, and they could keep it simply by keeping the faith. God did not ask them to enter into another covenant with Him, but only to accept His covenant of peace. The proper response of the people,” wrote Waggoner, “would have been, ‘Amen, even so, O Lord, let it be done unto us according to thy will.’” Instead the people responded by making a promise themselves: “‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do’” (Exodus 19:8). It is no wonder that with a longing heart God responded, “O that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children forever (Deut. 5:29).
Waggoner made it clear several times that “in the first covenant the people promised to keep all the commandments of God, so as to be worthy of a place in His kingdom. This was a virtual promise to make themselves righteous; for God did not promise to help them.” “The first covenant was simply this: A promise on the part of the people to keep His holy law, and a statement on the part of God, of the result to them if they should obey Him.” Again, “the promises in the old covenant were really all on the part of the people. … [T]he first covenant was a promise on the part of the people that they would make themselves holy. But this they could not do.” The people assumed the responsibility of working the works of God, showing a lack of appreciation of His greatness and holiness. It is only when men are ignorant of God’s righteousness that they go about to establish their own righteousness, and refuse to submit themselves to the righteousness of God. Their promises were worthless because they did not have the power to fulfill them, yet Israel repeated the promise twice (Ex. 24:3, 7).
As a result of Israel’s unbelief, the Lord followed an alternate plan and came down to the level of the people. He descended on Mount Sinai in the midst of fire, lightning, and an earthquake, causing the people to tremble as He spoke the words of the ten commandments—none of which had he done for Abraham, on whose heart He had written those same ten precepts. Although the moral law “had been known since the creation,” Waggoner saw it as the “added” law and the “schoolmaster” that was to bring us to Christ, as spoken of in Galatians 3:19, 24.
Waggoner recognized that “God’s law—called His covenant—was the basis of the [old] covenant between Him and Israel.” Yet, Waggoner made it clear that the ten commandments “antedated,” or already existed before being spoken at Sinai, and were thus “entirely distinct from the transaction at Horeb.” Although the desired outcome of both covenants was the same—the keeping of God’s commandments— this could never be the case when the covenant was based on man’s promises. Consequently, the purpose for the giving of the ten commandments was to direct “the minds of the people to the Abrahamic covenant, which God confirmed in Christ.” This was the purpose of the law for all time: “God’s plan of salvation of sinners, whether now or in the days of Moses, is: The law sent home emphatically to the individual, to produce conviction of sin, and thus to drive the sinner to seek freedom … which was extended long before, but which the sinner would not listen to, … and the living of a life of righteousness by faith in Christ.”
In contrast to Smith and Butler, who taught that the ceremonial law was the old covenant, Waggoner believed that the “‘ordinances of divine service’ formed no part of the first covenant. If they had, they must have been mentioned in the making of that covenant; but they were not. They were connected with it, but not a part of it. They were simply the means by which the people acknowledged the justice of their condemnation to death for the violation of the law which they had covenanted to keep, and their faith in the Mediator of the new covenant.”
Waggoner felt that Butler’s position seemed to “imply that before the first advent men approached God by means of the ceremonial law, and that after that they approached Him through the Messiah.” Waggoner was responding to Butler’s idea that “in the so–called Jewish dispensation forgiveness of sins was only figurative. … there was no real forgiveness of sins until Christ, the real Sacrifice, was offered.” Butler had also made the provisions of Christ exclusive to the Jews, who were under the ceremonial law.
Waggoner, on the other hand, believed that “all transgressions committed under that covenant, that were pardoned, were pardoned by virtue of the second covenant, of which Christ is mediator. Even though Christ’s blood was not shed until hundreds of years after the first covenant was made, sins were forgiven whenever they were confessed” on account of the “Abrahamic covenant, which God confirmed in Christ,” who had been slain from the foundation of the world. “If the first covenant had contained pardon, and promise of divine assistance, there would have been no necessity of any other covenant.”
Waggoner also protested against the exclusiveness of Butler’s view: “[Christ] redeems none who were not in the condition which He was made. And since only the Jews were subject to the ceremonial law, your theory would make it that He came to save only the Jews. I am glad that the proper interpretation does not oblige us to limit the plan of salvation in this way. Christ died for all men; all men were under the condemnation of the law of God; and so He was made under its condemnation. By the grace of God He tasted death for every man [Heb. 2:9].”
Waggoner did not believe, as Smith did, that the old covenant was faulty because the promises referred to the ceremonial system, but because the promises of that covenant were those of the people. Israel had lightly esteemed the everlasting covenant that God had made with Abraham, and in the face of all that God had done for them, they presumptuously took upon themselves the responsibility of their own salvation. By doing so they entered into a covenant that “gendereth to bondage,” of which the allegory of Sarah and Hagar in Galatians 4 speaks: “It is a vivid contrast between the old covenant, with its ministration of death, and the new covenant, with its ministration of the Spirit of life. … We are not directed to Mount Sinai, to trust in the law for righteousness, when it has for us only curses, nor to the old covenant, with its ministration of death, but to Mount Zion, where we may find the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and may find peace and help ‘exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.’”
Finally, unlike Smith and Butler—who believed that the promises to Abraham and his “seed,” referred to in Genesis 15 and 17, were fulfilled in the old covenant dispensation by Israel coming into possession of Canaan— Waggoner saw that the everlasting promise to Abraham was for the earth made new. This promise would not be ultimately fulfilled until his seed, which was Christ, came into possession of the promised inheritance at the second coming. Galatians 3:19 states: “Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgression, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” Waggoner’s view was that “at the coming referred to, the seed will inherit the promise. … Christ has not received it, for we are joint heirs with him; and when he receives it, Abraham and all those who are his children through faith, will likewise receive it. … [T]here are not many promises referred to in this nineteenth verse, but only the one promise, the inheritance, and that promised inheritance will be received at the second coming of Christ and not before.”
When comparing these two views on the covenants, it is not hard to see how tension could easily arise. The Ministerial Institute became the next battleground where advancing light met the darkness of tradition and unbelief.