An Overview of Covenant Theology

Good evening.

Tonight we're on lesson number nine in our study of ecclesiology. It's a 25-part series. And like last week, tonight's not really a Bible study. It's more of an overview. I'm trying to give you an idea of what covenant theology teaches. I mentioned last week that we all have spheres of influence that we've grown up in. We went over dispensationalism last week. This week is covenantalism. If you have been to Ligonier conferences or enjoyed maybe their teaching series online from R.C. Sproul, you probably have some covenantal influence. It doesn't mean you are a covenant theologian. It just means that you have been influenced and benefited from them, just as you may have been influenced by John MacArthur when he talked for so many years.

When we go through our outline tonight, there are going to be no fill-in-the-blanks, just like last week. It's just there for your reference. And we're going to go over the main tenets of covenant theology, its history, and also the different types. There is what we call Reformed covenant theology. There's also 1689 federalism, and there's also a type of what we call Christian reconstructionism. And they're all various types of covenant theology. They all have some things in common, but they also have things that are very different. So hopefully by the end of tonight, I'll have given a good overview of what this represents. Speaking to lecture point number one,

covenant theology is a comprehensive hermeneutical approach to understanding Scripture, particularly related to ecclesiology. That's why we are studying it as we study ecclesiology. It answers, or tries to answer, what's the difference between Israel and the church. As we saw last week in dispensationalism, they pretty much make a hard distinction. Israel and the church are separate — separate peoples, separate identities, separate plans, separate purposes from God, separate destinies. You could say that dispensationalism in its basic form would say that the church is, say, an orange,

and that Israel is an apple. They're two different things.

Covenant theology is kind of the opposite of that. It actually states that they're pretty much the same.

There's not a lot of difference between them.

Covenant theology is sometimes called federal theology or Reformed theology. We often use Reformed theology kind of loosely of any system that's Calvinistic, that focuses on the sovereignty of God. But really, Reformed theology is much more than just an emphasis on God's sovereignty. It's an emphasis on a covenantal framework of viewing the Scriptures.

Covenant theology is covenant-centric.

What I mean by that is not that covenant theology is not theocentric or not Christocentric, but simply that the whole system looks at Scripture as it is told and unfolded through the various covenants, starting in the Old Testament, all the way up to the New Testament and the New Covenant.

You can view these hermeneutics as almost goggles, so to speak, right? And the hermeneutic that the covenant theologian teaches is that of doing everything in light of God's revelation, the way He's revealed Himself in the various covenants.

It emphasizes the continuity and unity between the Old and New Testaments. So in other words, it emphasizes the similarity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, the Old Testament and the New Testament.

It teaches that there's one people of God throughout Scripture and that the church existed in the Old Testament. They pretty much say the church — or Israel — was the Old Testament church, and the church in the New Testament is a New Testament church. So they don't really make much of a distinction. It teaches that there's one people of God throughout Scripture.

The covenant of grace, the covenant of works, and the covenant of redemption are the three foundational covenants that explain God's saving work. And don't worry, we're going to go over these when we get to paragraph number four, okay? But they use this three-part covenantal framework — the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, and also the covenant of grace — to describe how God saves men.

The crucial idea that unites both the Old and New Testaments together is a covenant called the covenant of grace. That's kind of the main one that they focus on. God is working out His saving purposes for humanity through the covenant of grace. All the later covenants that we call the historical covenants — the covenant of Noah, the covenant with Abraham, the covenant with Moses, the covenant with David — these are all basically summed up, in their mind, in the covenant of grace, okay?

They're simply expressions of this one greater overarching covenant of grace. So covenant theology deals with looking at all of God's revelation through covenants, and it uses three covenants that are theological in nature mainly: the covenant of works, the covenant of redemption, and the covenant of grace.

Lecture point number two here. The early church fathers basically looked at covenants as a way of expressing the deity of Christ. In the early church, the first 200 or 300 years, they were battling heresy, right? Was Christ divine? Was He not? How do we explain the Trinity? Is the Holy Spirit a person or is He a force? And so they didn't have time to develop a full-orbed covenant theology, but they did speak of Christ as being the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant — that in His exaltation, when He was resurrected from the dead, He sits at the right hand of God and He has all power and He rules over the nations — because they wanted to make sure that everybody understood that Christ was divine. This was simply a defense of Christ's deity against both paganism and Judaism.

Augustine of Hippo, who lived around 354 to 430, wrote his most famous work, "The City of God." I had that assigned to me 36 years ago when I was in college by a political professor. I was taking a political philosophy class. He was also Presbyterian, loved the Lord Jesus. And this was his way of introducing political students into theology. I read it and it gripped my heart and I couldn't get enough of it. And in "The City of God," Augustine, way back then in between 300 and 400 AD,

he wrote of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. So he was one of the first ones that really expounded on this. And again, we're going to find those shortly.

Later on in Reformed theology, we'll find that as a hermeneutical system, it originated during the Reformation. That's when it came into full bloom. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, it set off a firestorm, and all of a sudden churches broke off from the Catholic church. And all of a sudden they had to do theology, right? Because before then, they just trusted whatever the priest said, and they didn't understand what he said because he spoke in Latin. Most people didn't understand it. So they were now reading the Bible in their own tongues and understanding the Bible for the first time, working out this theology. And covenant theology was instantly kind of formulated during this time.

Martin Luther did not find covenant theology central in his theology. It just wasn't a central thing to him. He focused on the sovereignty of God — and we'd say, of course he's Reformed, right? He's the man who kicked off the Reformation — but it wasn't a big part of his theology. He focused on law and gospel, but not on covenant theology. John Calvin, though, his friend, did definitively focus on covenant theology. Other early reformers who developed covenant theology were Ulrich Zwingli — he was the man who died with a battle axe fighting the Catholics in battle, quite a fellow — Heinrich Bullinger, Zacharias Ursinus, and Johannes Oecolampadius, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly.

Oecolampadius taught a remarkably developed covenantal theological system; he was called the first systematizer of covenant theology. If you read it, it looks like it was written yesterday. I know it was written 400 years ago or more.

After the Reformation, covenant theology was thoroughly systematized by Herman Witsius and also Johann Cocceius. So early on it took its form.

Lecture point number three. Covenant theology spread very early all throughout Europe through the writings of Francis Turretin. Francis Turretin is a wonderful theological resource, not just for covenant theology, but for all things in the Bible. It's a three-volume set, very easy to understand. He postulates his whole systematic theology in questions and then answers. He asks a question and then he answers it. So he's kind of like reading your mind and he organizes the way that we would think. "Well, what about this?" Oh, that's the next question. And then the answer is there. Also in the English, William Ames and John Owen. John Owen is a lot harder to read than a guy like Francis Turretin. Owen never said anything in two words that he could have said in 20. He was very verbose. That was just the way of his style.

Covenant theology was also spread in the Reformed Confessions, chiefly the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Westminster Confession of Faith. When we talk about the Reformed churches that came from Europe, such as the Dutch Reformed Church, or when we talk about the Scottish Reformed churches, they had what they called three forms of unity — in other words, what brought them together. It was the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and also the Synod of Dort, which was an early formation of what we call sovereign grace type doctrine. And so all those would unite them. As long as you held to one of those forms, you were considered in good standing and Reformed.

It was later popularized by the Dutch Calvinist Herman Bavinck. Bavinck's works were just recently — the last few years — translated into English fully, but he has a one-volume book that's been translated for years. It's called "Wonderful Works of God" and it's so devotional. It's wonderful reading. And the Dutch-American theologian Geerhardus Vos, another Dutch-American theologian, Louis Berkhof, wrote perhaps the most influential systematic theology textbook that teaches covenant theology.

The key American Presbyterian theologians were Charles Hodge and also the later A.A. Hodge, of Westminster, and also B.B. Warfield. They were both what we call Old Princeton. At one time Princeton was a conservative powerhouse, right? Not anymore. So they refer to that as Old Princeton because they were such a light for so long, training ministers of the gospel. Likewise, John Murray and Meredith Kline were important covenant theologians, and they were associated with Westminster Theological Seminary. Then O. Palmer Robertson, Michael Horton, and the late R.C. Sproul are considered the most influential covenant theologians today. So those are some of the guys that you can read if you want to learn more about this.

Lecture point number four. Covenant theology gets its name from the biblical term covenant, which is translated from the Hebrew word berith and the Greek word diatheke. The Latin word for covenant is foedus, which is where we get the term federal theology from. So again, sometimes it's called federal theology, sometimes it's called Reformed theology, sometimes it's called covenant theology, but it's all the same.

Covenant theology teaches that all of God's relations to humanity are understood in terms of three covenants. The first is a covenant of redemption, which was made between the persons of the Trinity in eternity past. Now, when you open up your Bibles and say, "Okay, show me this covenant of redemption," you're not going to find a heading somewhere in your Bible that says "This is the covenant of redemption."

But you see it talked about — what does Jesus say in His high priestly prayer, John 17?

He says that the people You've given to Me, He hasn't lost one of them. And He says, "I want them to be with Me, that where I am, they may be also," right? So He's praying for those people that God gave Him before the very foundation of the world. And we see that throughout the Gospels. So the Reformed theologians are often criticized: "Well, you're not going to see anywhere in the Bible where it says explicitly the covenant of redemption." But they'd say, "You're not going to see anywhere in the Bible where it explicitly says the Trinity, but you believe the Trinity too, because it's a real concept in Scripture. It just isn't called that." This is a theological term, the covenant of redemption, which is basically the Father giving the Son a people to save. That's why Christ is called the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world, right? He was eternally purposed to lay down His life for His people.

The second is the covenant of works, which God made with Adam before the fall, in which Adam is a representative of the human race.

Some of the Reformed theologians call that the covenant of creation, but the covenant of works — again, it's a theological concept. You're not going to see the heading "covenant of works," but we see all throughout Scripture that God gave Adam a mandate, right? Not to eat of that tree, right? And you're also supposed to do other things. You're supposed to subdue the earth, right? And you're supposed to have dominion over the world. Adam didn't do those things, right? And when he fell, what happened to us? As the head of humanity, we all fell in him. He was a covenant representative. And we see that in the New Testament — Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15: "In Adam all die. But in the second Adam, in Christ, all live." So that concept is there.

The third covenant is called the covenant of grace, which was made with Christ as the last Adam. And it represents all who were elected in Him throughout history, and it's unfolded over time by different administrations. And what they mean by that is that the later covenants — called the historical covenants — the covenants with Abraham were just an expression of that covenant of grace. The covenant with Noah and David and all those, even though there are different covenants in time, they reveal just more fully what they would call the covenant of grace.

Covenant theology acknowledges the many different covenants of the Bible, such as with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the new covenant. But it condenses all post-fall covenants underneath the one single covenant of grace. Just as I mentioned with dispensationalism, it's a fair comparison to say they look at the church as apples and Israel as oranges.

Covenant theology would say that going all the way back to the garden, that very first promise that was made to Eve in Genesis 3:15 — that from her seed would come a Son who would crush the head of Satan — that that was the new covenant in seed form, that that was an acorn. And then slowly over time, it grows and becomes an oak tree. But it's the same item all throughout. It's just progressively revealed through the covenants.

Although there are differences of administration between these covenants, each of the post-fall covenants are basically the same, emphasizing the unity between the covenants. Covenant theology thus asserts that Israel and the church are the same, but under different administrations. So they're saying that Israel, underneath the Mosaic covenant, was the people of God, just as the church in the New Testament is the people of God underneath the new covenant, and that they're existentially linked. They always have been the same. That's what covenant theology actually teaches.

Covenant theology asserts that Israel and the church are both comprised of believers and unbelievers — a mixed people under the covenant. Let me explain that.

Remember when God tells Abraham — this is in Genesis 17 — that your male children need to be circumcised, that this is going to be the sign of the covenant, right? If you were a male Israelite, you were circumcised; you were part of the covenant.

You were part of God's people, so to speak. Now, what if you didn't trust God? What if you didn't obey Him? What if you weren't faithful to Him? You were still considered to be part of that covenant. So when they look at that covenant, they'll say, "Well, there's evidently in that covenant both saved people and unsaved people." You can look in the old covenant — look at almost all the kings of the northern tribes. They were all wicked guys: Ahab. You can look at different priests who were sinful in the old covenant and did not walk with God, but yet they were males and they were circumcised and they were part of the covenant. So what covenant theology teaches is that because that was true of the church as Israel, that's true of the church today — which I disagree with. I think that's dead-headed and wrong. What they would say is — whereas we would say that the church is indeed visible and invisible, that the church makes up the people who are regenerate — in any church you have some people who, maybe they walked the aisle and they got dunked in the baptistery, but they're not really saved. They just did it as a formality. Only God knows the heart, right? Well, they would say that in the new covenant, just like the old covenant, it's a mix of believers and unbelievers, therefore,

just as the covenant sign applied to all male children that were born in the old covenant, we should baptize all babies, whether they're boys or girls, in the new covenant. You see, they see this complete unity between Israel and the church. It's the same covenant of grace, but just different administrations. So that's where they get their rationale for baptizing infants who have not professed faith, who have not been regenerated yet, right? Now they're hoping that those babies will be, and they're raised in godly homes. Every parent hopes that, but that doesn't give those babies a special status as covenant children with special promises that a kid who isn't baptized — who has never gotten wet — doesn't have. They still need Jesus. They need to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus when it's appropriate for them, at the right time, right?

So that helps when you understand that every system has presuppositions.

I mentioned last week with dispensationalism that their key thing is that the church and Israel are separate — they have separate identities, separate purposes, and separate features. So if you put on those goggles, that will help you understand how they reason out some of their theology, right? Which may seem very strange to you, right? The same with covenant theology. If you're like, "How on earth would they justify baptizing an unregenerate person?" — well, if you accept the presupposition that Israel and the church are exactly the same, underneath the exact same covenant, then it makes sense, right? So that's how they actually get to that decision.

Although there are differences of administration between these covenants, each of the post-fall covenants are basically the same, emphasizing the unity between the covenants. Covenant theology thus asserts that Israel and the church are the same, but under different administrations. Covenant theology asserts that Israel and the church are both comprised of believers and unbelievers — a mixed people under the covenant. Likewise, they assert that the signs of the covenant — circumcision and baptism — signify the same covenant membership and therefore supply the rationale for infant baptism. They assert that the experience of salvation of believers in Israel and the church is the same. And even I think dispensationalists would agree with that — that Old Testament saints were saved the same way as New Testament saints, through faith in Christ. Their faith looked forward to what the Messiah would do, and looked forward imperfectly. They didn't have a full understanding of who the Messiah is and what He would do, but they knew He was promised. And God said that He was going to take care of Satan through the Messiah. And our faith is the same, but it simply looks back with fuller understanding to what Christ has done for us on the cross.

They assert that the experience of salvation of believers

in Israel and the church is the same. The only difference is that the church is more diverse. In other words, it's not just ethnic Jews, but it's Jews and Gentiles — whosoever will believe — and a more knowledgeable version of Israel. In other words, we know more because we're on this side of the cross.

Lecture point number five. Covenant theology rejects a wooden, literalistic hermeneutic. They hold to a literary or literal hermeneutic in the sense of the grammatical-historical approach, which interprets Scripture according to the intention of the author. In other words, they would say it depends on what the author is trying to communicate. You know, if Jesus says, "I am the door," He doesn't mean that He's some wood on a hinge, but He's saying that He's the only way into the fold, right? When He says, "I am the way," He's not saying He's a road — a physical road — but He's saying, "I'm the way to God." It's a way, it's an expression. And so that's what they mean by the grammatical-historical, or the literary, as opposed to a wooden literalistic approach to Scripture. And most of these systems,

back in dispensationalism, would pretty much agree with the same thing. They would say that they may be more faithful to it because they're a little bit more literalistic.

And what we're going to look at next week, progressive covenantism, they would say the same thing too — that we take God's Word seriously. None of these systems really have bragging rights over who takes God's Word seriously. They all are people who are trying to explain how the old and the new fit together, how Israel and the church fit together, and how we interpret Scripture.

They assert a Christotelic hermeneutic. Now you may not have heard that term before.

The pastor at the very beginning held up a little monocle — it's like a telescope. And "telic" simply comes from telos, which means keeping the end in mind.

And the end of all things is Christ.

He's the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. And so their hermeneutic — they like to look for Christ as the fulfillment of all things, of all the promises of God, finding their yes and their amen in Christ. That sees Christ as the fulfillment of every promise of God. They assert that the New Testament has hermeneutical priority over the Old Testament. Should I agree?

We've been reading in Hebrews. What do we read in the very first chapter, Hebrews 1:1–2? "God has spoken in many ways through the prophets."

"But in these last days, He spoke unto us through" who? "Through the Son." He's the full and complete revelation of God.

They assert that the New Testament has hermeneutical priority over the Old Testament. They assert that this is the same hermeneutic displayed by Christ and His apostles. They assert the sensus plenior, or fuller sense, hermeneutical principle.

This principle, the sensus plenior, teaches that the earlier revelation can take on an expanded or fuller meaning without contravening or contradicting the integrity of the earlier text, but rather developing it in a consistent and organic way. For example — kind of put this in light — God promised in Genesis 12 that He would bless Abraham, right? And through him bless the whole world, right? And He would bless him, He'd give him land, and He would give him seed, right? Descendants. And then when you get to Genesis 15, that land expansion gets bigger, right? And then by the time you get to Genesis 22, it's huge, right? He'll be a father of many nations. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Then you get to the New Testament — "the meek shall inherit" what? "The earth." And you get to Romans chapter 4, Paul says that the promises to Abraham were that he would inherit the world, not just one little piece of land — the world — and this is a word by faith, not by the law, right? So he's taking those promises and expanding them. In other words, newer revelation is not being unfaithful to the old revelation. The old revelation was that he would inherit the land of Palestine, right? But when you get to Romans 4, Paul says the promises to Abraham were that he would inherit the world — that includes Palestine, right? That would be kind of like if I promised one of you, "Hey, I'll give you a Volkswagen Bug," and then I ended up giving you a Ferrari, right?

Ferrari — have I lied that I was going to give you transportation? No. A Ferrari is way better than a Volkswagen Bug, right? That's kind of the idea behind it: that later revelation can indeed expand on earlier revelation without contravening it or contradicting it.

As the Old Testament is only part of the canon of Christian Scripture, it must be interpreted in light of the New Testament. In other words, the Old Testament is Christian.

It's about Christ. We preached this past Sunday, right? On the feasts of Israel — what were they all about? They were about Christ, right? And so the New Testament is how we interpret the Old Testament. Both are mutually interdependent on each other, but the whole canon of Scripture doesn't end until we get to the book of Revelation, right? And so that is why we explain the older parts of Scripture in light of the newer parts.

Lecture point number six.

Covenant theology embraces typology — persons, places, or events, institutions, and other things connected to a biblical pattern with a prophetic nature that then progress or escalate to the antitype. We talked about that a couple of times already in this series. And a good example of that: we talked this past Sunday about how the Passover was a real, historical event where God rescued the nation of Israel out of bondage, out of Egypt, by applying the blood of the lamb over their door, right? And therefore the firstborn was saved, right? That's a type. But that type is expanded even to greater, fuller, mature meaning in Christ. And we read this past Sunday how Christ is our Passover, right — that He died on the cross for us. And because His blood is applied to us, the death angel passes over us, right? And we leave bondage and we go into the promised land, right? That's the whole story of Scripture.

They assert that the promised land was not an end in itself, but a type pointing to a greater reality. And there's Romans 4:13 — I mentioned a little bit earlier how the promises to Abraham were that he would inherit the whole world. They assert that the land promised to Abraham is the entirety of the new heavens and earth. One day we think of heaven as being up there, but heaven is going to be here. The earth is going to be recreated — a new heavens and a new earth. And we don't understand exactly how it's going to be, but I know it's going to be wonderful and how great that's going to be.

Flip over on the back. This is lecture point number seven. Covenant theology asserts that while Israel and the church are the same under the covenant of grace, they are under different administrations or laws.

In covenant theology, not all the Old Testament laws apply to believers. In other words, yes — they would say, in their opinion, the church and Israel are basically identical, but they exist under different covenants, so they exist under different laws. In covenant theology, it divides the law into three parts: the moral law, the civil law, and the ceremonial law.

They assert that the civil law — which would have governed Israel's national life — and the ceremonial law — which would have had to do with the sacrifices, the observances of the feasts of Israel, like we talked about this past Sunday — that these are no longer in effect.

They have passed away, because they were part and parcel of the Mosaic administration, which is fulfilled in Christ. They posit that the civil and ceremonial laws were in effect only as long as a covenant theocracy exists. They were part of the Mosaic covenant, and as we will read in Hebrews chapter 8 when we get there in a few weeks, and also Hebrews chapter 10,

it is obsolete because a new covenant has come. In contrast, the moral law is always in effect. They assert that the moral law is summarized in the Ten Commandments. They assert that God's moral law is embedded in our conscience, as we are created in the moral image of God.

Most covenant theologians assert that the Sabbath is still binding as moral law continuity, but allow for discontinuity or differences by saying that the new covenant transformed it from the seventh day to the first day of the week, as the believer's rest is already completed in Christ. Let me explain that.

The Reformed idea — or the covenant idea — that there are three types: the moral, the ceremonial, and what we call the civil law. That may be helpful, but it's not always helpful

because some laws you can say, "Well, is that moral or is that civil, right? Or is that ceremonial? What about the Sabbath day?"

They assert that because the Sabbath day is moral law, it is therefore still in effect. It just changed days. But can moral law change?

No. Moral law, if it's a reflection of the character of God — God's character doesn't change, right? Ceremonial laws can. That's why we have Paul in the New Testament, in the book of Colossians: "Let no one judge you in Sabbaths or new moons or ceremonies," right? We're not under obligation to keep the old covenant. Every day is the Lord's day, right? And we do worship Christ on one day of the week — it's Sunday instead of Saturday, the old covenant Sabbath. So that's one of what I would call an inconsistency there. And I define moral law a little bit differently, but we'll get to that next week when we look at progressive covenantalism, okay?

Covenant theology asserts that in the New Covenant there are three uses of the law. The first is the civil use. The civil use is meant to restrain lawless behavior. In other words, we have laws such as "thou shalt not steal," "thou shalt not kill." Those are biblical laws, right? Don't those have a civil use in society, right? You can argue that the American system of law is greatly affected by what we call the Judeo-Christian heritage, right? Because our laws are based on those things. How do we know that we shouldn't kill? Well, the Bible tells us, right? It's against the very nature of God.

The second use is the pedagogical use. The pedagogical use acts as a mirror to expose sin and drive us to Christ. Paul says in the book of Romans that the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. The Greek word paidagogos may sound like a teacher, but actually it was a bodyguard.

In Roman times, it was a very wicked society, and a kid walking to school might be taken and sexually abused or harmed or murdered on the way to school. So the paidagogos was a trusted servant, usually of the household, who would be a bodyguard to safely usher that child to the schoolmaster, right? To get them there safely. And the law is there as a pedagogue that shows that we're sinners and exposes our failures and shows that we need a Savior, and to drive us to Christ, who is the ultimate Rabbi, the ultimate Teacher, if you will.

The third is the normative use. The normative use acts as a ruler to provide norms for the believer to live a Christlike life. In other words, it shows us what pleases God. It's the norming norm, the ruling rule. We use Scripture as a guide to live by, right? How do we know what pleases God but by Scripture? We don't guess at it. We see — He says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." He says, "Pray without ceasing." "Bless those who curse you," right? That's how we know what pleases God — Scripture.

Lecture point number nine. Covenant theology is not monolithic. In other words, there are different types of covenant theology. Although covenant theology is usually associated with confessional churches of the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions, it is also historically represented by Baptists as well. The Savoy Declaration was written in 1658 by a group of independents and congregationalists. They were the forerunners, if you will, of the Baptists. Some people think it's the Anabaptists, but it's really the congregationalists.

It was a revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith from 1643 to 1649. The Savoy Declaration would be revised in 1677 and would become known as the 1689 Baptist Confession. There was an earlier Baptist Confession — I think it was 1642 or 1643 — and it was not covenantal. It definitely focused on the sovereignty of God, and it had great things to say about union with Christ, but it wasn't covenantal in its explanation of how we read the whole Bible. But this one was. It started with the Westminster Confession but made it Baptistic, if you will.

1689 federalism holds to three theological covenants in the covenant framework, the same as covenant theology. In other words, there is a covenant of redemption, there's a covenant of works, and there's a covenant of grace. However, 1689 federalism asserts that this one covenant of grace is not administered by the historical covenants. In other words, as a contrast to covenant theology that you would see in Reformed churches or Dutch churches or Presbyterian churches — which see all the historical covenants as subsumed underneath one covenant of grace —

Baptist covenant theology, 1689 federalism says no. They would say all the historical covenants reveal and speak about the covenant of grace, but the covenant of grace doesn't actually happen until the new covenant. In other words, it redefines it as the new covenant, essentially.

1689 federalism asserts that this one covenant of grace is not administered by the historical covenants, but is instead revealed by them as part of redemptive history. In other words, 1689 federalism redefines and positions the covenant of grace as only the new covenant. Historical covenants bear witness to the covenant of grace, but the covenant of grace is only actually administered in the new covenant. So there's both continuity and discontinuity.

They assert that this difference between the old and new covenant is not one of administration, but of actual substance. In other words, it wasn't inaugurated until you get to the new covenant. 1689 federalism asserts that the new covenant is unconditional and that all members of the covenant are participants in its substance, not just its administration. In other words, they'd say: because the new covenant only takes place when Christ comes and He says, "My blood of the new covenant," therefore the link between that and the old covenants — where all males were circumcised — is broken. They're not continuous; they're different. In other words, the covenant of grace only pertains to regenerate people — people who have been saved by the Lord, people who have been born again, people who have confessed Christ. There's not both saved and unsaved within the church.

In other words, all members of the new covenant are regenerate; therefore 1689 federalism asserts that only the regenerate are to receive the sign of the new covenant, which is baptism. So that's where they would break off and be distinct from Presbyterians and from the Dutch Reformed. They would say, "No, there's continuity, yes, but there's also discontinuity." And the new covenant is the covenant of grace. That doesn't start until the New Testament; therefore we only baptize believers. That's the key thing there.

Most Reformed Baptists did not find their lineage this way.

In other words, Reformed Baptists — you can trace them being really prolific starting around the 1900s. You had older sovereign grace Baptists before that. There's always been a chain coming down, but they were not direct descendants of this. This was actually kind of retrieved in 2012. A book was written that found a Baptist reformer from the 1600s and his account of the Savoy Declaration. So they say, "This is historic Baptist." And that's okay, but I do want to let you know that because of that, people who are very avid in what they call 1689 federalism — they're kind of gatekeepers. They're saying, "If you're a different kind of a Reformed Baptist and you don't hold exactly what we say, then you're not really Reformed. You're not really part of the historic tradition." It's like, "You weren't either — it's 2012."

So there is another form that we'll look at next week — another form of Baptists who are Reformed but would hold to what we call progressive covenantalism.

Lecture point number 10. Covenant theology is also represented by Christian reconstructionism. Christian reconstructionism holds to an extreme, though not absolute, continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. They assert that since the church and state are both instituted by God, they should both be governed by God's laws. Society should be reconstructed from the ground up based on Christian principles revealed in Scripture. They attempt to promote and implement a consistent worldview in exhaustive governance based on the abiding authority of the Old Testament law. In other words, they would say, "No, the civil law that the Reformers would say was fulfilled in Christ" — no, that should still be in effect — you know, eye for an eye, essentially. No, I tease a little bit about that. They don't believe that in an absolute sense. They would call what they call the general equity principle. Some of the laws that speak of certain situations — those situations no longer apply today. We don't have the same cultural context, but we take the general principle behind it and apply it to us. And the original guys who formulated this, they were very broad in their views. They were into economics and — I'll be honest with you — reading some of them back when I was in seminary in the early 90s, they were quite fascinating. These were intellectual dudes, right? And they were seriously trying to be faithful to God's Word. But I think that it was rather extreme, right? They're basically calling for a Christian theocracy, is what they're calling for.

They attempt to promote and implement a consistent worldview in exhaustive governance based on the abiding authority of the Old Testament law. They emphasize theonomy and dominion theology. Let me explain that. Theonomy asserts that society should be ruled by the covenant civil law. So glad that it's not by the old — (Laughter) I like grace, right? They argue that since the Bible is a source of ethics, it should be the source for all the government of the church, the family, and the public.

Little ones, you were rebellious to your parents in the old covenant — you know what they would do, or could do, to you?

They could stone you, right?

Aren't you glad that we're not underneath the old covenant law, right?

Dominion theology teaches that as God gave Adam the mandate to take over and rule the earth — we find that in Genesis — then they must seek to Christianize all realms of society through the precepts and principles of Scripture. Now I'd agree with that to an extent. I would say that's simply the gospel, right? That we fulfill Adam's dominion mandate by going into all the world and making disciples of all nations, right? They have a different view — going in and toppling governments if necessary, causing revolutions and establishing a Christian theocracy. That would be one way of doing it.

Christian reconstructionism channels theonomy and dominion theology into its own unique version of postmillennialism in their attempt to Christianize society. We're not going to get into postmillennialism, but it is a particular view that basically holds that the world becomes Christian through the success of the gospel before the return of Christ. And we're going to get to that when we study eschatology. And the original form of that, in the classical form, isn't bad at all. It's very optimistic. It's about the gospel. Most of the Old Princeton theologians — Jonathan Edwards and those guys — they embraced that, but it's a very different form from what the Christian reconstructionists hold to.

And we'll talk about the differences when we get to eschatology. The three leading thinkers of this system are Rousas Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen, and Gary North. I think Gary North is still alive today. I believe Rushdoony and Greg are both

passed on, and they were believers. But again, your presuppositions make all the difference in the world, right? They can lead you down the wrong path, I believe, sometimes.

Regarding the future of Israel, covenant theology in general sees no outstanding promises that are specific to Israel — in other words, in regards to the land or to the nation. Some covenant theologians — right, I would actually argue many covenant theologians — will see a future conversion of the Jewish people based on Romans 11:24–27. Not all, but many do. But that future conversion they may see there is not part of any outstanding historical covenant promise. They would say that the Mosaic covenant is fulfilled, the Davidic covenant is fulfilled, the Abrahamic covenant is fulfilled in Christ — and still being fulfilled in the sense that when every person comes to know the Lord, it's the fulfillment of that promise.

Mostly the historic covenant is considered already fulfilled in Christ. Covenant theologians that do see outstanding prophetic promises assert that they are being fulfilled currently through Christ and His church, or will reach their full fulfillment in the new heavens and the new earth — i.e., the land promises, in that in the new creation we inherit the earth, literally.

Let me skip to number 12. Covenant theology embraces a multitude of eschatological outlooks, including historical premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. No single outlook is prescribed. This is one of the big distinctions between dispensationalism and covenant theology. Dispensationalism starts off with the

predicate — you could call it — that the church and Israel are different and have different promises and different destinies. And therefore, I've never known a dispensationalist to not be what we call a dispensational premillennialist. You wouldn't be anything else if you're a dispensationalist by definition.

Covenant theology, because it doesn't have that particular predicate, so to speak, allows you to hold whatever view of how you see Scripture unfolding. And when you look through the book of Revelation, it can be very confusing, right? You get five Baptists and you'll probably have 10 different views on it. And you can look at the greatest minds and say, "Well, this guy I trust, and he's a great writer — he believes this. And this guy believes this. How do I know?"

Lecture point number 13. The key strength of covenant theology is that their system seeks to highlight the unity and the continuity of God's saving purposes in Scripture. It tries to see one plan of redemption throughout all of Scripture and one people of God. I would say that's its key strength.

A critique of the covenant hermeneutic is that the threefold covenant is theologically derived. The idea of having the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, and the covenant of grace — it's theologically derived. In other words, it's constructed. It is explaining things that are in Scripture, but this can be very confusing, because when you get to, say, the book of Hebrews and it contrasts the old covenant with the new covenant and says that the new covenant is superior in every way to the old covenant — right? Better priesthood, better Mediator, founded on new and better promises — well, then they'd say, "Well, no, that's still the same covenant between the old and new. It's the one covenant of grace." You see, they flatten out the distinctions between them. So then when you read the way that the Bible describes it in its own language — between the old covenant and the new covenant — there's some confusion there, right? Sometimes these theological systems can actually disrupt the biblical narrative as it's presented in the Bible. This diminishes and confuses Scripture's own covenantal language comparing the old covenant to the new covenant. This theological language flattens the difference between the covenants.

Another critique of covenant theology is that it inconsistently applies Old Testament typology. It asserts that the land is a type fulfilled in Christ and in the new creation. So it asserts that part of the Abrahamic promise — the land — is a type. But yet it rejects that Abraham's seed is a type fulfilled in Christ and those in union with Him. So it says, "Okay, the land is typological, but not the seed," or not his descendants. Both covenant theology and dispensational theology want to bring the promise made to Abraham regarding a seed to the present day via the lineage of physical descendants.

Dispensationalism

applies the promise to ethnic Israel — the promise of Abraham to ethnic Israel. Well, covenant theologians apply the same promise to the children of believing parents. In other words, it's saying, "Hey, the promises are to you and to your children." And just as all the children of Abraham were circumcised in the old covenant, therefore, if I'm a believing parent in the new covenant and it's the same one covenant of grace, my children are special covenant children and have a special — you'd say it — place in God's plan.

So they both depend on physical descendants, but in different ways. And I believe that's an error. If you're going to be consistent in your typology, the land is not only typologically fulfilled in Abraham's covenant, but so is his seed. We read that in Galatians. It says, "His seed is singular." That seed is Christ. And then it says, "All who are in Christ are the sons of Abraham," right? So it doesn't matter what your heritage is. It doesn't matter if your parents are Christians or if your parents are Jews. What matters is: who do you put your trust in? Do you put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ? And if you do, then you are truly the child of God. You're truly Abraham's seed.