promise (grace). While the consensus in Calvinist theology is that works are antithetical to grace as the means of justification, differences emerge in attempts to describe this antithesis. On the one hand, Calvinist theologians were more in line with Kline tend to say that works are ultimately the basis for grace, since God requires perfect upholding of the law for heavenly reward. Since this is understood to be an impossible task for the corrupted sinner, it is Christ who perfectly obeyed the law in fulfillment of the covenant of works. Jesus, earning the reward, graciously bestows it to His people (cf. Luke 22:29). For example, R. C. Sproul writes, "Man's relationship to God in creation was based on works. What Adam failed to achieve, Christ, the second Adam, succeeded in achieving. Ultimately the only way one can be justified is by works." The sinner is thus saved by Christ's works and not his own. Right standing before God is then due to an alien or imputed righteousness received by faith, not by personal faithfulness which is the fruition of salvation and not its ground. On the other hand, Calvinist theologians more in line with Murray tend to say that works were never meant to be the basis for grace, but that grace precedes the call for obedience. Consequently, works are the necessary response to grace and not the precondition for it. For example, Michael Williams writes, "The function of law within Scripture is the maintenance of relationship, not the creation of relationship. Legal obligation is not the precondition for life and relationship. Rather, life and relationship form the necessary environment for obligation." While this view still affirms the necessity of the merit of Christ, it departs from Kline's construal of merit as a fundamental principle of the covenant of works. Wesleyan covenant theology Methodism maintains the superstructure of classical covenant theology, but being Arminian in soteriology, it discards the "predestinarian template of Reformed theology that was part and parcel of its historical development." The main difference between Wesleyan covenant theology and classical covenant theology is as follows: As such, in the Wesleyan-Arminian view, only Adam and Eve were under the covenant of works, while on the other hand, all of their progeny are under the covenant of grace. With Mosaic Law belonging to the covenant of grace, all of humanity is brought "within the reach of the provisions of that