Gymnastics in Covenant Theology

If there were (and there should be) a recognized category  "scripture passages that I really, really like even though I don't understand them"  I think this passage:

⁴ For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, ⁵ and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, ⁶ if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame. (Heb. 6:4-6)

would be near the top of my list.

I have heard one subspecies of covenant theologians, my friends (which excludes the despicable theonomists) the Presbyterians, explain it this way:

This passage refers to those in the covenant but who are not in the elect--typically non-elect children of believing parents. They received the blessings of being in the covenant but ultimately never accepted Christ.

Even if you accept Presbyterian covenant theology, I'd give this about a 4 out of 10 on the "smells right" reasonableness scale. It doesn't fit. What does "fallen away" even mean? That they lost their salvation? Of course not: my brothers and sisters of the Presby's would rightly scream: no, that ain't possible! So in their explanation, "fallen away" must mean growing up with all the benefits of the church but then turning your back while still unconverted. But why then can they never repent? Where else in the bible is such a message taught? This explanation elevates the serious (but not uncommon) occurrence of those walking away from the church for a season, because they reached adulthood and are not yet converted,  into the unpardonable sin. No, such people, like all others, are free to repent and accept the gospel.

Another problem is that it is a pretty odd place in scripture for the writer of Hebrews to suddenly inject a lesson about the perils of second class membership in the covenant.

But for me, the real problem is the underlying Presby claim that there exists New Testament people in the covenant but not of the elect. Tag-alongs. I have tried for more than 20 years to convince myself from scripture that there are such people (because I would like to be a Presbyterian, given they have a more chill attitude toward Rock 'n Roll, spirits, and PG-13 movies) but I have never been able to come even close to finding a satisfactory proof of this claim of limited membership. Since I think my Presbyterian friends are earnest exegetes, I have concluded that an understanding of the existence of covenantal membership for the unsaved is one of three things you must be taught at a young age or you'll never grasp the details. ¹

What about Baptists covenant theology? Where being in the covenant and being of the elect are synonymous? Well on the surface we do even worse. We have all the same problems as the Presby's except but we don't have the non-elect members of the new covenant (that being the null set) to throw under the bus.

The only alternative universal explanation that I'm aware comes from a Presbyterian theologian (Sproul Sr.) although I suspect he didn't invent it. And that is the ad absurdum explanation. Namely that the writer of Hebrews laid a premise:

P: You can lose your salvation

And then reached an absurd conclusion which, by the rules of logic, negates the premise:

C: Having lost your salvation, you can never repent because you've already "used up" Christ's payment for your sins the first time you were saved, so for him to save you again, he'd have to be crucified again. That's not happening.

This is clever because it flips a passage that in a plain reading appears to warn us of the possibility of losing one's salvation into a passage that refutes the possibility. Awesome. But still, I have to give it about a 6.5 on the "smells right" scale.

But I got nothing better to offer.

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¹ The other two are, of course, Fizzbin and baseball. I mean seriously, try explaining this to an adult:

In baseball a foul ball is a strike, unless you have two strikes and then it isn’t, unless you just tip the ball and then it is a strike if the catcher catches it, but it is not a strike if the catcher drops it, or if you just try to hit the ball a little bit with your bat placed horizontally then for some reason it is a strike even if nobody catches it, because reasons. And if you do strike out you are done and it counts as one of your team's allotment of three outs unless, of course, the catcher fails to catch the third strike, in which case...