Review of ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered: An Introduction to Covenant Theology’ by J. V. Fesko

A Review of J. V. Fesko, Signed, Sealed, Delivered: An Introduction to Covenant Theology, Sanford, Fl., Ligonier Ministries, 2024, hdbk.

There is no shortage of books introducing Covenant Theology, but one supplied by John V. Fesko, a leading contemporary scholar of the system, is to be welcomed. Although I have a good number of these introductions, I wanted to have Fesko’s opinion on the subject.

In his introduction the author opens with the story of Israel and God’s covenant with them. Israel was faithless and broke their covenant, but God sent Jesus , and He “enttered into a covenant with His bride, the church, to redeem her.” (2). It is unclear what he means by this. It may be interpreted to means that Israel failed but in Christ the church is victorious. But that that imply that the church came after Israel, which in Fesko’s Presbyterianism is not the case. But more of that later.

The book makes it clear that the theme of “covenant” pervades Scripture. For instance, he states,

“From beginning to end, God speaks to us in the Bible only through covenant, so we must seek to understand what a covenant is and how God gives us salvation through the covenant of grace.” (7).

He is right. Covenant is so important in Scripture that it attaches to everything God does, at least after the Flood. But this quote also reveals something that lies implicitly at the core of Covenant Theology. That is, that the Bible is about salvation, and that salvation is brought to us via the covenant of grace.

The first chapter is entitled “What is a Covenant?”

Like many CT’s going back to Patrick Gillespie, Fesko is content to define “covenant” as an agreement. He cites Isaiah: ““We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we are in agreement.” Many CT’s leave it there. Parallelism accepted, but a covenant is a very particular kind of agreement. It behooves a theologian to be more searchant; to be more pedantic about the meaning. Fesko is not one of them. He provides a section that breaks down the elements that can be attached to covenants. He includes oaths, Laws, sacrifices, blessings and curses, love, witnesses, and signs. This section is helpful, although Fesko does not say that an oath is the essential component of biblical covenants. As far as the other aspects are concerned, they may or may not be part of the covenant.

After this he goes on to differentiate the types of covenants. Speaking of covenants God made with humans, Fesko states,

“The first of these covenants is the covenant of works, or the covenant that God made with Adam in the initial creation before the fall and the entrance of sin into the world. The second of these covenants is commonly called the covenant og grace, which is the covenant that God made with Adam and Eve right after their fall.” (17-18).

In Dispensationalism, or in what I call Biblical Covenantalism, the Bible is not only about salvation. It is about God’s Project, His feud with Satan, His commitment to creation. Moreover, God brings about the overhaul and redidication of creation to Himself through the various biblical covenants he has made, especially as they pass through the New covenant in Christ’s blood. I make this redress because very often covenant theologians assume “the covenant” before they properly introduce it.

I draw attention to this because I find it ubiquitous in the literature of Covenant Theology (CT). The structure of the theological covenants; the covenant of grace in particular, are taken for granted even as CT is being explained. A reader who is not paying attention can be drawn into the world of CT without knowing it. Perhaps it’s my suspicious nature, but I am wary of approaches that assume their tenets prior to proving them. It’s almost as though the proofs don’t really matter, the assumptions must prevail notwithstanding.

There follow three chapters on the three theological covenants of Covenant Theology. On the covenant of redemption Fesko turns first to Luke 22:29:

And I bestow upon you a kingdom, just as My Father bestowed one upon Me… (NKJV)

and just as My Father has granted Me a kingdom, I grant you… (NASB)

The verb translated “bestow” in the NKJV and “grant” in the NASB is diatithemi. The word can mean “to appoint or dispose of one’s own” and sometimes this involved formal arrangements like a covenant. CT’s jump on this and suppose that the “kingdom” appointed by the Father was covenanted in the form of the covenant of redemption (Ibid, 22-25). But just as the word “agreement” does not automatically mean “covenant” neither does the word “appoint” or “bestow” mean “covenant.” There is a lot to prove before making that correlation. This is done while ignoring Luke 22:30 which refers explicitly to “My kingdom” and to “judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” In other words, the allusion is to the Davidic covenant.

To further bolster the recognition of a covenant of redemption a connection is made through John 17:4-5 (25) and Christ’s pre-creation glory and Psalm 110:1-4 where “Trinitarian deliberations” are seen (25). These “deliberations” are presumed to take place before creation, although Psalm 110 says nothing about it. What the Psalm does do is connect the Davidic kingship with the High Priesthood when Christ will “rule in the midst of [His] enemies” from Zion (Psa. 110:2). This again relates to the Davidic covenant but with clear New covenant overtones, as Hebrews 7 and following demonstrates. Our author is trying hard to make all this refer to the covenant of redemption, but he ignores the actual biblical covenants in the process. At least he turns to Zechariah 6:13 where the prophet writes of “the covenant or ‘counsel of peace’ between Yahweh and the Branch, Messiah…” (26). The problem is that the “counsel of peace” in the context is between the throne and the High Priesthood, which is reconciled in the Priest-King on the throne. What seems to be forgotten is that whereas the biblical covenants aptly cover all the bases for understanding these passages, the covenant of redemption remains an idea in search of verification. This extra-biblical “covenant” acts as a kind of parasite, gobling up texts that are meant for the covenants that are found on the pages of the Bible.

Chapter 3 is on the “covenant of works.” This covenant is supposedly one which God made with Adam and Eve before the Fall. It is a works covenant because if they walked in obedience before God for a certain period of time our first parents would be rewarded with eternal life (cf. 54). They failed and plunged everything and everyone into misery. Fesko gives three reasons for seeing a covenant of works in Genesis 2. The first is the commands not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the dominion mandate. These are interpreted as God’s Law, which follow the same pattern as the Ten Commandments (42-44). The second is the presence of a covenant curse in the consequences of eating from the forbidden Tree (44-45). The third pointer is the “invocation of God’s covenantal name, Yahweh” (45).

There is then an attempt to establish Hosea 6:7 as a proof-text for the covenant of works using Genesis Rabbah, a third to fifth century A.D. Rabbininc document (46-47). For sure, Genesis Rabbah connects Genesis 1 – 3 to Hosea 6:7, but not as a covenant of works. Moreover, a close look at Hosea 6 shows that it is more likely that the prophet has in mind the town of Adam, which is mentioned alongside Gilead (6:8) and Shechem (6:9) in the context, or else the noun Adam refers to the characteristic of “men” being covenant-breakers as per Hosea 8:1. In either case Hosea’s recalling a covenant in Genesis 2 is the least likely understanding. Despite CT’s ingenious reading of a covenant into Genesis 2 there is no exegetical evidence of its presence. What we do read is Yahweh, which is not revealed as God’s covenant name until Exodus 6:3, prohibiting Adam from eating from the forbidden tree and warning of the dire consequences. That can be done without having to make a covenant. In Genesis 4 Yahweh warns Cain about his attitude. After Abel’s murder God curses him. But noone sees a covenant being made. And for good reason. In neither Genesis 4 or Genesis 2 is any oath sworn. The truth is that a “covenant of works” is being shipped in to Genesis 2 accompanied with an oath contrived to fit a theological scheme. Romans 5:12f. is then brought in to fortify the interpretation even though Paul nowhere speaks of a pre-lapsarian covenant in the entire chapter. The author notes that this coupling together of texts creates Federal Theology (55-56), wherein all are included as covenant-breakers in Adam. This sets up the apparatus for the covenant of grace.

As everyone knows who understands CT, the “covenant of grace” is where it’s at. I’ll let the author summarize it for us:

“God slowly unfolds His covenant promise in subsequent covenants throughout redemptive history: in the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and new covenants.” (66).

The covenant of grace is the salvation covenant, the Calvary covenant. Every single one of the elect in Jesus are in that covenant. There cannot be more than one people of God where the covenant of grace is present. The above quote from Fesko packs a lot in a single sentence. The covenants of God in the Bible – he misses the Priestly covenant – all are just ierations of the supreme covenant. Hence, when reading CT’s one will constantly run into the expression “the covenant.” This is the great unifying covenant. This is the crux (pun intended) of Covenant Theology.

But looking at the Fesko quote one may sense a certain unease. Where does one find this all-important covenant in Scripture? And how come the covenants which are easily found in Scripture subsumed beneath it? And finally, what effect does this submission of the biblically explicit covenants to the covenant of grace have on them? These are the questions that must be asked. For all the ingeniousness of CT, we must ask if it has permission from within Holy Writ to do this.

The answer, I believe, is a firm No! Fesko does a good job outlining the covenant of grace, but, in the end all he can do is to allocate disperate passages (in Gen.3; 9, and Heb. 11) to make them do work in service of a covenant that they were never intended to for. In writing on the Abrahamic covenant as a progression of the covenant of grace the land promise which is so central in the Pentateuch is entirely absent because it contradicts the requirements of “the covenant” (69-71). One must understand that because of the dictates of the covenant of grace, both the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants are deemed to have been fulfilled (hence the moniker “fulfilment theology” which CT often goes by). So, for example, when the author claims “God specifically says that He will not violate His covenant” (77 referring to Psa. 89), he does not mean that Jesus will one day reign over the nations from Israel in Jerusalem, as per Psalm 2:6; Isaiah 2:1-4; 54; Jer. 31 – 33; Mic. 4; Zech 8, 14 etc. He means that Jesus is already reigning, but not from Jerusalem/Zion where the Davidic covenant predicts He will reign, but from heaven. So CT lops off the land and physical seed aspects of the Abrahamic covenant (98) and the landed Jerusalem-centered aspects of the Davidic covenant and calls them ‘fulfilled.”

Chapter 5 is about the “Covenant Signs.” The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil becomes a sign of God’s Law (91), while the Tree of Life becomes “a sign connected to God’s promise of eternal life” (Ibid). Except the Bible nowhere informs us that either tree served such a function – the symbolism is inferred by the requirements of the system.

Concerning the Lord’s Supper and Baptism we read,

“When Christ inaugerated the new covenant [which CT’s say is the final expression of the cov. of grace], the sacraments of the Old Testament (circumcision, Sabbath, and the Davidic line) found their terminus and fulfillment in Him. Because Christ was the ‘amen’ of God’s covenant promises…” (95).

So, “the signs have given way to the reality, Christ. (96). In Christ there are new signs (e.g., 96).

A chapter about the Church where Fesko highlights the importance of a reading community does a good job of turning doctrinal instruction into practical application, even if it is in terms of Confessional theology. And the book closes with a helpful selected annoitated bibliography.

In conclusion, although I disagree with Covenant Theology, I think Fesko has written an excellent primer on the subject. It is a book with a great deal of previous work behind it (xiv), and it shows. This would be great book to give to students for a course about CT from either pro or con perspective.