Origins of the Covenant of Works: “Ambrogio Catarino’s Doctrine of Covenantal Solidarity and Its Influence”

I was reading through J.V. Fesko’s work Death in Adam, Life in Christ and came across some interesting connections between the Covenant of Works/Adamic Covenant and its origins.

Fesko notes on pg. 72 that “…it appears that Roman Catholic theologians were some of the first to place Adam in covenant with God.”¹ He attempts to tie the concept of an Adamic covenant back to Jerome through the Latin Vulgate translation of Hosea 6:7, which I find unconvincing², and then through Augustine (though not exactly on comparable grounds), but it really finds its grounds in Ambrogio Catharinus who is a Roman Catholic priest.³

Fesko on pg. 73 acknowledges that “such a covenantal arrangement between God and Adam predates similar Reformed formulations by roughly forty years.”⁴

On pg. 74 he notes, “the degree to which Catharinus and Layñez laid foundational stones for the Reformed doctrine of the covenants is a fascinating question that deserves greater examination but is beyond the scope of this study.”⁵

What is interesting is he cites Denglinger, Omnes in Adam Ex Pacto as a source for deeper digging, and what I found in a TGC review⁶ of this work was even more interesting.

Richard Snoddy notes in his review of Denglinger’s work that the grounds for the creation of the covenant with Adam was actually used to defend the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Yes, you heard that correctly.

He says, “The heirs of this tradition might well be surprised to learn that they owe an intellectual debt to a sixteenth-century Dominican named Ambrogio Catarino and shocked to learn that he developed his covenantal thought in defending, of all things, the Immaculate Conception of Mary.”⁷

He continues, “Catarino was forced to reflect on the doctrine of original sin in his defence of Mary’s immunity from Adam’s guilt… Only this, thought Catarino, could explain how Mary remained untainted. Though biologically descended from Adam she was, by God’s will, excluded from the covenant and therefore from the guilt of Adam’s sin.”⁸

In addition Snoddy notes, “The final chapter, in which Denlinger considers the evidence for Catarino’s influence on Reformed theologians, is fascinating. Before examining the Reformed sources, Denlinger shows how Catarino’s ideas were represented in the writings of contemporary Catholic authors, whether sympathetic or critical. He rightly notes that this interaction increases the likelihood that Reformed theologians were exposed to, and influenced by, these ideas. He traces Catarino’s influence in the writings of a range of British Reformed theologians, most significantly in the works of William Whitaker and Robert Rollock. He makes a strong case for Catarino’s influence on the development of Reformed covenantal thought, specifically on the way in which the prelapsarian covenant came to function as the basis for humankind’s moral solidarity with Adam.”⁹

Catarino’s work, as Denlinger mentions, is the foundation for seeing law and covenant as intertwined, and for grounding the Adamic Covenant, and Catarino used it as grounds for a defence of the Immaculate Conception of Mary which was later picked up by Reformed Theologians.

Quite interesting!

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