Paul Duggan has some thoughts in response to some statements in the recently adopted Missouri Presbytery Federal Vision Study Report. The relevant section of the report reads as follows:—

We affirm that Adam mediated the first covenant in the original integrity of the creation order. We further affirm that having created Adam in and for covenant blessing, God called Adam to loyalty and fruitfulness: so long as Adam walked with God in love and obedience, God promised to bless him, his posterity, and the entire earthly creation, but should Adam fail to obey God’s word, he would bring frustration into the creation, and would subject himself and his posterity to the enslaving power of sin and the reign of death. We deny that God’s creational intention was for Adam to mature, eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, die, and be raised from the dead; and further deny that Adam’s sin was only seizing the fruit of the Tree prematurely; and thus deny that death coming upon Adam and his posterity was part of God’s creation purposes instead of a threatened response to human disobedience.

As Paul observes, it is quite obvious that this is written in response to the position put forward by James Jordan in The Federal Vision. It is also quite obvious that it is based on a confused reading of Jordan’s argument. I find Jordan’s position — that the prohibition on the tree was temporary and would have brought about a ‘good death’ for Adam, leading to a more glorious form of life — quite compelling. Some further arguments for the position can be found in these lecture notes that I wrote last summer.