The central claim of the Consummation Anyway (CA) model is that God could bring about eschatological consummation sans the fall and the incarnation, whereas the Sin Anyway (felix culpa) model proposes consummation and the incarnation presuppose God’s ordination of sin for the purpose of bringing about God’s greater glory and humanity’s greater good. In this essay, I will argue that a proper Reformed approach to God’s decree and covenant draws together truths contained in both models. The result is my thesis: While in Adam humanity could have been confirmed in eternal life sans the fall and incarnation (CA), in Christ the God-man humanity is promised even greater glory than Adam could have attained (felix culpa). Indeed, while the first Adam could only confirm life, the last Adam gives life (1 Cor 15:45).
I will make this case in conversation with the work(s) of Francis Turretin, Herman Bavinck, Mark Cortez, Nathaniel Sutanto, and Scott Christensen. Cortez argues for the Incarnation Anyway (IA) model, in which he posits Christ’s incarnation is essential to humanity’s glorification, such that even if Adam had not sinned the incarnation would have been necessary to bring about eschatological consummation. Sutanto has responded to Cortez’s arguments, offering a defense for CA, grounding his case on God’s free benevolence in promising eschatological consummation by way of covenantal condescension. Christensen argues for a felix culpa perspective in which God’s ultimate purpose is for his glory and his glory is most highly revealed through Christ’s atonement. Therefore, Christ’s redemptive work would not have been necessary without the fall into sin, so the fall is necessary for God’s purposes, hence the “blessed fall.”
I will seek to draw together the strengths of both Sutanto’s and Christensen’s approaches, while gleaning from Turretin and Bavinck, to argue that God’s ordination of evil does not take away from the legitimacy of the offer of eternal life to Adam conditioned upon perfect and perpetual obedience. The strength of the CA model is that it upholds the integrity of the Covenant of Works, such that hypothetically, Adam could have been glorified in keeping the covenant. This is an important point, because it allows for us to maintain sin and the incarnation are not necessary or essential for humanity to attain eschatological consummation, as God can freely offer this via covenant. The strength of the felix culpa model, when rightly understood and connected to the CA model, is that it amplifies God’s sovereign goodness, and reinforces that he works all things according to his decretive will. Therefore, what Adam and fallen humanity meant for evil, God in Christ ultimately works together for God’s greater glory and the saint’s greater good. Together these two models offer insight into God’s sovereign decree and his covenantal arrangement(s) “for us and our salvation” in Christ.