I read the following words in Fountain of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenantal Tradition by Charles McCoy and J. Wayne Baker today, and I think it sparked a light bulb moment.
“Second, federalism understand the relationships between God and the world and among humans as based on covenants among their members, some tacit and inherited from the past, others explicit and made or renewed in the present” (p 12).
The idea of tacit vs. explicit covenants sparked what seems to me the implications of the above quote, and which I have attempted to state succinctly as follows:
When eternal, inviolate beings have a tacit understanding of relationship, formed in virtue of their purposive unity and common character, that agreement forms what in human terms we call a covenant.
The term “covenant” is required to lend the strength of Divine imitation to human relational compact(s). In other words, implicit agreement among the Godhead is, by virtue of their nature, a covenant in human terms, though human covenants must be explicit due to the depravity of human character.
This is why it is proper to speak of a “Covenant of Redemption” among the Trinity, even though such a covenant, as such, is never named in Scripture.
Long-ing For Life 