Category: Biblical Studies

Part Twelve This and the next installment uses material from my article “The Eschatology of Covenant Theology,” originally published in the Journal of Dispensational Theology, 10:30 (Sep 2006). The Eschatology of Covenant Theology (1) As well as encompassing the explicit scriptural covenants like the Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New Covenants, due to its extensive character, the “Covenant of Grace” basically flattens out these more easily identifiable covenants and merges them into one. This can be seen in the following excerpt, …

Part Eleven The Genius of Covenant Theology Now that I have given sufficient coverage of the main tenets of Covenant Theology and have inserted some critiques, I want to pause to appreciate the comprehensiveness of this approach. This comprehensiveness adds substantially to its appeal. Here then are my thoughts on what makes Covenant Theology so formidable and attractive. I divide my observations into four braid categories which consider its coherence, its teleology, its Christ-centeredness, and finally, its ability to address …

Part Ten The Scholars Versus the Theological Covenants So far I have tried to set out what Covenant Theology teaches in regards to its three major theological covenants. I have shown that variance exists, and have demonstrated how the covenant of grace is the grand operative in the system. We also saw that there are of necessity paedo-baptist and credo-baptist opinions about who is in the covenant of grace and about “Federalism” as well as about whether it is a …

Part Nine Credo-baptism and the Covenant of Grace I have taken a quick look at the way paedo-baptist covenant theologians understand baptism as a sign of the New covenant aspect of the covenant of grace, but of course many Baptists are Reformed yet they reject the baptism of infants as unbiblical. Baptists see the covenant of grace as incorporating the regenerate only, not the so-called “historical elect” – those who have been sprinkled as babies but have yet to express …

Part Seven I ended the last post talking about how CT reduces the nation of Israel down to Jesus Christ and then interprets the Church in Him to be the “True Israel.” There is more to say about that, but first I think a little more orientation is required. I want to begin this installment with a definition of Covenant Theology from one of its major contemporary practitioners, Ligon Duncan: “Covenant theology is an approach to biblical interpretation that appreciates …

Part Six The Covenant of Grace (2) It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of “the covenant of grace” to Reformed theology. When one reads of “the covenant” in the writings of CT’s the implication is that it is the covenant of grace. When it comes to CT’s comprehending the Bible as a “redemptive-historical” book, the thing that is powering this is the covenant of grace. Hence, “The covenant of grace tells us that the whole Bible is about …

Part Five Some of this post reuses material from a previous article. The Covenant of Grace (1) Covenant theology depends for its credibility upon theological covenants with virtually no exegetical proof.  This is especially the case with the “Covenant of Grace.”  “[N]ot only do covenant theologians speak of the one people of God in both Testaments, they also affirm that the church existed in the Old Testament.  One key linchpin for seeing continuity between the covenants revolves around the centrality …

Part Four The Covenant of Works (2) According to covenant theologians the Covenant of Works was what Adam and Eve were under in the Garden of Eden. As it was a covenant of “works” this means that they were under obligation to maintain “perfect obedience” (Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man, I. 158; cf. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 85). For the CT this is necessary because it is to be paralleled by Christ’s perfect …