Rev. Bill Baldwin writes [sadly, link is dead]

The tide of Reformed opinion is that the covenant with Adam was somehow gracious. The grace enters in two places: 1) God was not bound to offer Adam any reward for his obedience but could have required such obedience from him without any reward. That God chose to offer a reward through a covenant is considered gracious. 2) The reward God offered is so out of proportion to the obedience required that the size of the reward constitutes a further act of grace.

A veritable All-Star team of Reformed heroes have subscribed to one or both of those points, asserting or implying grace in the covenant of works: William Ames [1], the Westminster Divines, Francis Turretin, John Owen, Thomas Boston, R. L. Dabney, John Murray, Louis Berkhof, Anthony Hoekema. Only a handful — e.g., Herman Witsius, Johannes Heidegger, Charles Hodge, Meredith G. Kline — hold out against this tide. And Witsius does so after much agonizing. He knows what he’s up against.

Baldwin uses every means necessary to make his case. In several ways his arguments seem completely at odds with reality, with the Bible, and with the Reformed heritage. But he virtually admits this last truth. One has to admire that simply re-inventing the past is a tool he refused to use for the task.

Baldwin is a follower of Kline. Many people have admitted in other areas that Kline was quite an innovator. For example, Jeong Koo Jeon writes

Kline’s ‘intrusion ethics’ is certainly startling and innovative. He published his first landmark article on the subject in 1953. However, there has not been much subsequent discussion on this important issue since then. Greg Bahnsen, a Reformed theonomist, provides a brief but severe criticism of Kline’s intrusion ethics.’ But his criticism fails to penetrate and understand the exact nature of Kline’s thought on this relatively complicated issue. Despite Bahnsen’s criticism, Elmer Smick indicates that Kline’s intrusion ethics is one of the most innovative aspects of his biblical theology.

I think both of these men are powerful rebukes for others who insist that Witsius proves that Reformed theology in general has denied grace in the Covenant of Works or who simply pass off Kline’s innovations in covenant theology as “the” orthodox position, or who bash others in public writings or in conferences on the basis of Kline whom they identify to their trusting audiences simply as a Reformed theologian, not as a creative innovator.

When such discourse is resorted to, it indicates that truth is not even a consideration in the discussion, just power.