An Opinion Piece about "God's Prior 'Yes'" by Peter Leithart

Here is a very interesting article I found at Reformed News (reprinted there with permission from Leithart's blog). It's an opinion piece by Peter Leithart (Side note: perhaps I read too much Leithart, but most of what he says has the "ring of truth" to me). He says that the fundamental issue between the Federal Vision crowd and their opponents is an understanding of creation. This is a thought I have had myself, but I will let Leithart say it better than I can. Here's an excerpt, but by all means, do read the whole piece.

Before God prohibited Adam from eating the tree of knowledge, the Eternal Word had already spoken Adam into existence. Before God's No He had already spoken a preexisting Yes, and the Yes set the context for the No. The sheer fact that there is something rather than nothing is testimony to God's prior Yes.

Every No from that time on is set within the context of God's Yes: God says Yes to Noah, and then commands him not to eat blood. God says Yes to Israel in bringing them out of Egypt, and then issues the Ten Words. Every command that God issues presupposes His preexisting Yes, because unless God was committed to preserving a people He would not warn them off the way of death.

For a certain brand of Reformed theology, such talk amounts to denying the gospel because it denies what is thought to be the sub-stratum on which the gratuity of the gospel depends.The Federal Vision controversy is, from this angle, more about creation than about soteriology or sacramental theology. Far be it from me to accuse those who oppose the Federal Vision of "denying creation," but they are, in my view, failing to work through a fully creationist theology. Dare I say, they have failed to think through a fully evangelical theology of creation.

Well said.