An Overview of Progressive Covenantalism

Before we get started tonight, I wanted to mention that tonight we're on week 10. We've gone through a lot over the last three months with ecclesiology. This is a 25-part series. We started off with the definition of the church. We looked at the nature of the church. We looked at the attributes of the church. We looked at the marks of the church, the names of the church. We looked at the church in Israel. And then the last two or three weeks, we've looked at different theological systems that help describe the church, such as dispensationalism and covenantalism. And tonight we'll be looking at progressive covenantalism.

Say all this because next week we're going to take a break. Next week we're going to meet here, but we're going to do an elder Q&A session. This will be a chance for you to reflect on the last 10 weeks, specifically any questions regarding ecclesiology, which is what we'd like to answer first. And if you have any such questions and you think of them ahead of time, email Natalia there at the church office. Natalia will have them. We'll be able to lead off with those. But if you don't have a chance to do that, that's fine. Just bring yourself and your Bible and any questions you have, and we'll answer your questions. It'll be a dessert fellowship as well, so make sure you bring something sweet to eat, to share. It's always a fun thing to be able to do to get together with our brothers and sisters and talk about the things of God. So we're looking forward to that. And then we'll get back into ecclesiology the following week because we'll have 15 more lessons following that. So don't forget that next week.

Tonight we're on lesson number 10, which is an overview of progressive covenantalism. Like the last two weeks, this is not really a Bible study tonight. This is more of a lecture, and it's to present an overview of that system that we call progressive covenantalism that seeks to tie the whole Bible together. When you look at the old covenant and the new covenant, how do they fit? What's the difference between Israel and the church? How do we make sense of the old covenant commands? Are they still applicable today? And that's why theologians have come up with such systems. Progressive covenantalism is the one that we'll be looking at tonight. We're going to begin with lecture point number one.

Progressive covenantalism is a comprehensive hermeneutical approach to understanding Scripture, particularly related to ecclesiology. It's the reason why we focus on it when we do ecclesiology and not in bibliology, because it focuses so much on the church and who the church is and how it's different from Israel and where it fits into God's overall plan. Progressive covenantalism is new covenant centric. That does not mean it's not theocentric or Christocentric. It just simply means that as a system, it focuses in particularly on the new covenant as the culmination and the climax of all the covenants in Scripture, the entire Scripture narrative.

Progressive covenantalism emphasizes that the Bible records a plurality of covenants that over time progressively reveal God's one plan of redemption for His one people. In other words, starting in the Old Testament, we have God's promise at the garden in Genesis 3:15 that through Eve's seed, her offspring would crush Satan's head. That's what we call the proto-evangelion, the first gospel. And then we see that reaffirmed and revealed through the Noahic covenant, later through the Abrahamic covenant, then through the Mosaic covenant and the Davidic covenant. And all these covenants are unveiling more and more of who the Messiah is going to be and what He's going to do. And it all culminates in the new covenant, which we find in the New Testament.

These various covenants culminate in greater fulfillment in the new covenant in Jesus Christ. The term progressive is used to describe how God unfolds His revelation to His people over time. When we hear progressive, we all automatically think politics today, right? Progressive is kind of a synonym for liberal — and not liberal as far as classic liberal, but modern liberalism. So us who are more of a conservative persuasion, like, I don't want to be progressive, I don't want to be a liberal. But that's not what it's talking about. By progressive, it just simply means that slowly Scripture's story, starting in Genesis, going through Revelation, is unveiling more and more of the glory of Christ, right? It's progressively revealing with each step in the storyline.

The term progressive is used to describe how God unfolds His revelation to His people over time. The term covenantalism is used to describe how God's plan of redemption is unfolded through His covenants with His people. As we talked about last week, covenants are simply a way of God relating to His people; they're agreements that He would have with His people. And each covenant was unique and revealed something different about the Messiah — a new piece of the puzzle, so to speak.

The covenants in Scripture are not to be seen as separate and unrelated from each other, but are to be taken together in their diversity as a unified revelation to reveal the one plan of God's redemption centered on Jesus Christ. In other words, each covenant is not meant to be looked at on its own and separate as an island, but each covenant is related to the others. You see, for example, the Abrahamic covenant — God promised Abraham that he would have a people and that he would have a nation, right? And then we see in the Mosaic covenant that that nation has actually been made a nation, right, and given a theocratic government. In the Davidic covenant, we see that God promised that they would have a king on the throne forever to lead and rescue and save His people. So all these covenants are all related. They're not to be taken individually.

When each covenant is seen in its own context and then examined in terms of what covenants preceded and followed it, one can rightly see how all the covenants are related to one another. Each covenant will then be shown to reveal Christ and reach its climax in Him. By approaching Scripture this way, we interpret Scripture on its own terms as it reveals God's glorious plan unveiled in Christ. It's one of the keys to progressive covenantalism — to see Scripture in its own terms.

Last week, we talked about covenant theology. And remember, we said that covenant theology does look at the historical covenants — the Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant, the Mosaic covenant. But it doesn't really focus on them that much. It focuses on three theological covenants: the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, and what we would call the covenant of grace. Those are the three covenants that it really focuses on. And they say the covenant of grace covers all the other covenants, right? But if you read through Scripture, you would probably not get that. That's a theological derivation. The same with dispensationalism — remember two weeks ago, we read how dispensationalism looks at different periods of time where God worked in specific ways and that each revelation was kept in that specific dispensation. Some count eleven, some seven, some put forth four. They divide the Scripture up and compartmentalize it, so to speak, with these dispensations. And that's again something you probably wouldn't get through just a plain reading of Scripture. Progressive covenantalism prides itself on following the scriptural narrative of these covenants as they're unfolded from the old covenant all the way into the new.

Lecture point number two. Progressive covenantalism offers a middle way between dispensationalism and covenant theology.

Progressive covenantalism seeks to highlight both the continuity and the discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments while maintaining that the ultimate and concluding revelation is given in Christ, who fulfills all the preceding promises and covenants. It's been said that dispensationalism can never bring together Israel and the church. Remember, that's their presupposition — that Israel and the church are separate peoples, separate plans, separate destinies, right?

It's been said that covenantalism can never get them apart, right? Because they view all the covenants as flattened underneath the one covenant of grace. They therefore see the church as being identical to Israel and see really no distinction between them. And what progressive covenantalism does is recognize both the continuity — the similarity — and the discontinuity — the differences — as is unfolded and centered on God's one plan of redemption in Christ Jesus.

Progressive covenantalism asserts that the historical covenants in the Bible are not merely a literary theme; these covenants form the actual backbone of Scripture's great storyline and God's redemption of history. If we didn't have these covenants, we wouldn't have God's revelation, because that's how God revealed Himself — through His covenants. The biblical covenants reveal God's love and care for humanity and move history forward according to God's gracious plan to unite, reconcile, and bring all of creation under Christ (Ephesians 1:10). That's His ultimate aim — to redeem not just humanity, but creation, to bring all things under the headship of Christ.

This way of viewing Scripture is distinct from a dispensational approach of divided periods of time in which God administers His plan of redemption in different ways in each period. This way of viewing Scripture is distinct from covenant theology, which both flattens and summarizes the biblical covenants underneath the overarching theological covenant of grace. So it's distinct from these other two — it's kind of a middle way between them.

If you look at it this way, every single one of us has presuppositions regarding our beliefs. Those presuppositions are not necessarily a bad thing. For example, one presupposition that every one of us in this room shares is that we believe that Scripture is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. When we did bibliology, Caleb taught a great lesson on that. If you want to go to our theological series on YouTube, look it up. We all believe that. And so therefore Scripture is our rule for faith and practice and life, right? So that's a presupposition. So when we read God's Word, we take it seriously because we believe it's God-breathed — from His very lips, right?

Well, theological systems also have presuppositions. As I mentioned, dispensationalism has a presupposition that the church and Israel are always separate, different plans of redemption with different destinies. Covenant theology has its presupposition that the church and Israel are pretty much the same because they're underneath the same covenant of grace that existed from Genesis 3:15 onwards, right? You can say that the presupposition of progressive covenantalism is that God has one plan and one people, and that plan is unveiled through the covenants, and it culminates in the new covenant centered on Jesus Christ. It's a very natural way of reading the Scriptures.

Lecture point number three. Progressive covenantalism, like every hermeneutical system, sees traces of its system throughout church history. However, as a systemized method of studying Scripture, it can be traced back to the late 70s and early 80s to a pastor-led movement known as New Covenant theology. This was a group of pastors who were dissatisfied with the dispensational explanation of Scripture and the covenantal explanation of Scripture. Among them are men like Fred Zaspel, a great writer who wrote much about this during the time, and more recently, A.B. Caneday — some really good men. And this was a pastor-led movement, a non-academic movement.

New Covenant theology influenced and led to a revised system developed as an academic movement known as progressive covenantalism. In other words, these were seminary professors who took that and wanted to define it properly and wanted to be able to separate it from some of what we'd call New Covenant theology that had gotten wrong. They wanted to define it in an academic sense and write papers and books about it. The leading scholars of progressive covenantalism include Dr. Stephen Wellum, Dr. Peter Gentry, and Dr. Thomas Schreiner.

Dr. Peter Gentry is, I believe, now at Phoenix Seminary. He's an elderly gentleman, wise beyond years — the guy is probably still the leading Old Testament scholar. He knows more about Hebrew and the Hebrew customs than you and I will ever know, right? Dr. Thomas Schreiner is probably the leading New Testament scholar today. He's been a scholar for over 30 years at Southern Baptist Seminary. He's memorized the entire Bible, which is nuts. He's written a great commentary on the book of Hebrews that we're studying on Sunday morning. If you want some good edification, get that commentary — you will be blessed by it. And then Dr. Wellum, who is also at Southern, and who is the chair of systematic theology there, will be coming here actually in June. So we're looking forward to hearing him speak on a Sunday morning when the time comes.

Lecture point number four. Progressive covenantalism asserts that God's relations with humanity are understood in terms of six covenants. So it organizes itself around six covenants: the first being the Adamic covenant, which is sometimes called the covenant of creation; the Noahic covenant, which is the covenant God made with Noah, which basically reaffirmed the creation covenant; the Abrahamic covenant; the Mosaic covenant; the Levitical covenant; and the new covenant. These covenants are the primary ways in which God reveals His one plan of redemption. Through these covenants, God's salvation is unveiled — that's how we see His care for us, His love for us, His provision for us. Through these covenants, God's promises and intended typological patterns are given, developed, and ultimately fulfilled in Christ, because they all are pointing towards Christ. Christ is the fulfillment of each and every one of these covenants. These covenants are best seen as interrelated and interdependent on each other, as they have one author and one finisher, one author of salvation — and that's our Lord Jesus Christ.

Progressive covenantalism starts with the Adamic covenant, which is sometimes called the creation covenant. While Genesis 1–2 does not include the word covenant — so if you looked at Genesis 1 and 2 you wouldn't find "I'm making a covenant with him" — covenantal terms are definitely in the text, including expected obedience and sanctions for disobedience. We see that, right? You can eat of any tree except this one, and the day you eat it, what? You shall surely die, right? The New Testament shows that Adam served as a covenant head of humanity. We read about this in Romans 5 and also 1 Corinthians 15: "in Adam all die," "all sin, all fall," and "in Christ all live." These passages show that all of humanity is either represented under the headship of Adam or of Christ. We've talked about that before — there's only two kinds of mankind, right? Those who are in Adam, dead in their sins, or those who are alive in Christ.

The Adamic covenant, or creation covenant, is rich with typology that is used to point forward to the new covenant in which the Son of God, who is also the son of Adam, would perfectly keep covenant with God, perfectly obey God's commandments. He would crush the serpent under His feet and be the head of a new humanity and a new creation, just as Adam was, and create a new heavens and a new earth, right? It's all pointing forward to Christ.

Lecture point number five. The Noahic covenant reaffirms God's commitment to humanity and creation despite their fallen condition, right? It's the first covenant that we see after the fall, and despite man rebelling, God preserves humankind through Noah and his family, and He preserves creation. As we'd say, until the world ends, you're going to have summer and spring, you're going to have the seasons — God is going to take care and provide for His creation. God will preserve both man and creation, as He keeps His promise made in Genesis 3:15 to bring redemption through Eve's seed. God is a promise-keeping God. What He promised Eve, He reaffirms in the Noahic covenant.

The Abrahamic covenant will fulfill His promises to redeem humanity. Through Abraham's seed, all the nations of the world will be blessed. When we get to the New Testament, we find out that Abraham's seed, according to Galatians 3, is Christ, right? And it's in Christ that all the world is blessed. Salvation is only in Jesus Christ and in no other name.

The Mosaic covenant was given to reveal and intensify sin and thereby prepare God's people for Christ the Savior. Remember the story starting in Exodus 19, where they receive the law and they hear the law — it's given all the way through Exodus 24 — and they make covenant with God. Blood is sprinkled upon them. "We will keep your law," right? Then Moses goes to receive the engraving of it and he's gone for 40 days. And what happens? Total bedlam, total rebellion. "Let's worship this calf — he's the one who brought us out of Egypt. Where is this Moses and where is this God that he so-called represents," right? So the Mosaic law was given to actually incite sin, according to the New Testament.

Just because when a law is given by God, sinful man does not want to obey that law, right? He must rebel against it. That shows us our need for a Savior. It shows us our need for sacrifice. It shows us our need for atonement. The Mosaic law is there to show us that we're sinners and that we're in need of a Savior, right?

The Davidic covenant was given to bring the previous covenants to their climax in a promised king. This promised king was God's own Son, sitting on God's throne, ruling the nations. The new covenant is the climactic fulfillment of all the preceding covenants established with the patriarchs, Israel, and David. These covenants all find their substance, eternality, and full realization in Jesus Christ. He fulfills the old covenant in order to bring us the new covenant. Again, that's the overall storyline or backbone of Scripture.

Lecture point number six. As opposed to dispensationalism and covenant theology, progressive covenantalism rejects the idea that some covenants are solely unconditional, or what we call a royal grant covenant — which is a land covenant — such as the Abrahamic, Davidic, or even the new covenant. So progressive covenantalism says that all covenants are not merely unconditional.

Likewise, progressive covenantalism rejects the notion that some covenants are solely conditional, like the Suzerain-vassal treaties, such as the Mosaic covenant. We've talked about Suzerain-vassal treaties — that's where a king would come through and he would conquer you and say, "Look, I'm going to be your protector now, and this is the way it works. You give me 10% of all your crops, and I want that by this particular date. Bring that to me, bring me your livestock as well, and then I'll protect you from all these other guys who are worse than me. So I'll fight for you and protect you as long as you pay tribute and obey these stipulations. And if you don't, then we're going to cut this animal in half, and what we're doing to this animal may be done to you or me if we break this covenant." It's what we call a Suzerain-vassal treaty. But all covenants have both conditional and unconditional aspects to them according to progressive covenantalism.

— Unconditional. Because I believe you said conditional.

— Or solely unconditional, a royal grant — yes. Some would teach that some covenants, such as the Abrahamic covenant or the Davidic covenant, are unconditional regardless. And even the new covenant — which I'll get to in just one second here, okay. Sometimes we say the new covenant is conditional — people say what? I'll explain in just a minute. Progressive covenantalism asserts that all the covenants consist of both conditional features — which is bilateral — and unconditional features combined together. This tension is deliberate in the Bible's unfolding storyline because it's only resolved in Christ. The covenants are conditional in that they demand an obedient partner. Every covenant has conditions of obedience. This is seen even in the new covenant.

Now the new covenant does not depend on our obedience, but whose obedience did it depend on? On Christ. So it's conditional in that respect, right? If Christ had not perfectly kept the old covenant, He could not have fulfilled the old covenant. He could not have been our sacrifice, right?

The covenants are at the same time unconditional in that they are guaranteed by God Himself. Okay, let's flip back over to the back now. Lecture point number seven.

Progressive covenantalism upholds a sensus literalis hermeneutic — which means "the literal sense" — which seeks to interpret Scripture according to the intention of the author. Not a wooden literal, but simply whatever way the author seeks to write. Sometimes in Scripture, authors write poetically, right? Sometimes they write in parables. Sometimes they write in apocalyptic language. And so it uses the language that the author uses and is attempting to communicate to us. They assert that when the literal sense includes symbolism or typology as part of divine revelation, we must interpret the text in that manner. Therefore, progressive covenantalism focuses on the intention of the Author, who may at times communicate through figurative language and typology.

Because Scripture is the inspired Word of God, we must expect a unified message and commonality across the whole of the canon. No matter which author it is, it's going to have the same message. Progressive covenantalism asserts that the New Testament's interpretation of the Old Testament becomes definitive, since the later text illuminates the earlier text in light of Jesus Christ. In other words, we read the Old Covenant — the Old Testament — in light of Christ coming, His fulfillment, and His realization of all those covenants. Because revelation was given progressively over time, later revelation brings clarity as to what God intended in earlier revelation.

The sensus plenior, which we talked about last week — which is the fuller sense hermeneutic — is affirmed in that earlier revelation can take on an expanded or fuller meaning in later revelation without contravening the integrity of the earlier text. We talked about that last week, how God promised Abraham the land and that he'd be the father of many nations, and His promises get bigger and bigger and bigger from Genesis 15 all the way to Genesis 22, right? But He never once promises him the entire world in the Old Testament. But then you get to Romans 4:13 and what does it say? It says that Abraham was promised to inherit the entire world through the promises — not through the law, but by faith, right? So it's taking and expanding those promises and reinterpreting them in light of the entire new creation. The entire world is ours in Christ Jesus. Later revelation brings clarity as to what God intended in earlier revelation.

The sensus plenior, or fuller sense hermeneutic, is affirmed in that earlier revelation can take on an expanded or fuller meaning in later revelation without contravening the integrity of the earlier text, but rather developing it in a consistent and organic way. Progressive covenantalism will thus read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament. At the same time, they're careful not to steamroll the Old Testament, but cautiously study it in its canonical context to see its culmination in Christ. In other words, they don't just take it nonchalantly — they take it seriously and they take it the way that it was meant, but they see its fuller realization in Christ.

Progressive covenantalism thus upholds a literal hermeneutic seeking to interpret the text of the author. Yet it recognizes that this is not enough by itself, as we must also follow the progress of revelation across the covenants to see how each text points to and ultimately culminates in Christ. We don't leave that revelation within that specific covenant — we bring it all the way forward to Christ and see how it points to Christ.

Lecture point number eight. Progressive covenantalism examines every biblical text according to three different horizons. It's a way of reading the Scripture. The first horizon is one that you're already familiar with because you've been doing 3D — now what we call 5D — Bible study, which is an inductive way of studying the Bible. The first horizon is the textual horizon. The textual horizon is the immediate context of the text. You read a verse, but then what do you read? You read the paragraph that that verse is in. You read the chapter that that's in. You read the book that it's in to get an idea of the context, right? This includes the historical setting, the underlying grammar — have you ever done a word study, right, where you look up a word to see what it means? — the syntax, the genre, the textual variance, etc. So this first horizon, the textual horizon, is one you're already familiar with.

The second horizon is what we call the epochal. Epoch means a division or a period of time. We talk about, for example, in geology the different epochs — the Holocene epoch — these different periods of time that are represented in geology. Well, epochs also refer to specific periods of time and ages. The second horizon is the epochal horizon. It examines the text in light of where it specifically is located within God's unfolding of redemption. I'll give an example of that. If you open up the book of Leviticus, which I preached from a couple weeks ago — Leviticus 23 — it gave us all those festivals that they were to keep. Well, those were given in a specific point of time to a specific people, that specific epoch, if you will. The Levitical sacrifices were given as part of the Mosaic covenant for worship in God's temple. You couldn't carry them out apart from the temple in Jerusalem, with a high priest offering those sacrifices, right?

The third horizon is what we call the canonical horizon. The canonical horizon is the text in relation to the entire biblical storyline with its climax in Christ. The same Levitical system that prescribed the sacrifices that only the priest could offer — only in Jerusalem, and only at the temple — pointed to the greater storyline of Christ being the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world, right? That's what we call the canonical context. We read Scripture as God intended us to. This is sometimes called biblical theology — how the text fits into the greater overall storyline of Scripture.

Lecture point number nine. Progressive covenantalism embraces typology as persons, places, and events and other things connected to a biblical pattern with a prophetic nature that then progress or escalate to the antitype. We've talked about this before — Scripture uses many types that point to their ultimate fulfillment in Christ. We gave an example last week of Passover, right? Passover was a real institution that celebrated a real salvation that God provided the children of Israel as He brought them out of Egypt. But that was just a type that pointed to an antitype — an antitype is the fulfillment of that type. And that ultimate antitype is Christ, who is our Passover, right? His blood makes the death angel pass over us, right? We're covered in the blood of Jesus Christ. Salvation is only in Him.

Typology is rooted in redemptive history and biblical text. The original type of the Old Testament is transcended and surpassed by the arrival of the new covenant antitype. Typology is therefore a key literary feature that communicates divine truth, as opposed to allegorical interpretation that was never meant by the author, nor is found in the text itself. Sometimes in church history, even when you read the church fathers, you'll read a lot of allegory. For example, some of them will say — okay, Moses, in Exodus 17, remember when he's holding the staff up above his head, and when he would do so, Israel would prevail against the Amalekites, right? — they'd say, "Well, his outstretched hands point to Christ holding His outstretched hands on the cross." Well, that may sound flowery and religious, but the text doesn't indicate that, right? And that's not a typology that's expanded on and culminates in Christ. That's just an allegory, right? So there's a difference between allegory and typology. Typology is driven by divine revelation. These are specific types that God intended us to know and understand, and that find their fulfillment in Christ Jesus.

Lecture point number 10. Progressive covenantalism asserts that while we are not under the Old Testament law as a covenant — we're no longer under the Mosaic covenant, right? Hebrews, which we're studying, tells us that we're no longer under that — it still functions as Scripture. What does 2 Timothy 3:16 say? "All Scripture is God-breathed, and it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction, for training in righteousness," right? And so even though the old covenant law is no longer binding on us as a covenant — we're not under its curses because Christ paid our curse, nor are we under its blessings because Christ has earned all blessing for us, right? — we are still under it as Scripture, right? We should still revere it and learn from it.

All Scripture is profitable, even if it doesn't apply to us in the exact way it applied to Israel under the Mosaic covenant. Progressive covenantalism rejects the tripartite division of the law of covenant theology. We talked about that last week, how covenant theology divides or explains the law as three parts — the moral, the civil, and the ceremonial. They'd say, "Well, the ceremonial law pointed to things like making sacrifices and ritual purity laws, observances, and feasts, and those are done away in Christ," right? And they'd say that the civil law — regarding how you treat your animals and how you treat one another and what to do with a thief — those are no longer in effect because we're not a theocratic nation, right? We're not Israel. But they would say that the moral law is still in effect, right?

The problem is, it gets real hard to discern what's moral and what's ceremonial and what's civil. In a sense, anything that God commands makes it moral, right? It comes from God, right? So we don't actually use that framework in progressive covenantalism. Covenant theology maintains that unless the New Testament explicitly changes or repeals the Mosaic law, it's still in effect. That's why we can see things such as what we talked about last week — Christian reconstructionism trying to take the civil laws and their penalties from the Old Testament and bring them into today's life, because they'd say, "Unless it's been repealed, we're still under it," right? And Paul says, "We're not under the law anymore."

Likewise, progressive covenantalism rejects the notion of dispensationalism that we are only bound to what is explicitly repeated in the New Testament. Now, not all forms of dispensationalism repeat that, but many of them do. They'll say, "We're only bound to what is taught in the New Testament and taught by Jesus." There's some problems with that because there are some things that are mentioned in the Old Testament that aren't mentioned in the New Testament. What about man-stealing, right? What about bestiality, right? Those are in the old covenant law, and certainly you wouldn't say that's permissible — to go steal people and sell them into slavery — because it's not explicitly prohibited in the new covenant, right? Jesus didn't talk about it, so it must be fair game. No, not at all.

Progressive covenantalism instead teaches that we must consider a canonical reading of Scripture that moves across covenants beginning in creation and ending in the new covenant. The Bible's structure of creation, fall, and redemption must be considered in regard to ethics. Our ethics must always be grounded in creation because we were created in the image of God. As we talked about when we discussed anthropology, that includes not just the personal image of God, but also His moral image. Remember what Ecclesiastes says — that God made man upright, right? We were created holy, or else Adam could never have had that fellowship in the garden to begin with. So we have to go back to creation to consider our ethics — the way that God created us and the way that God intends us to be, which is perfectly reflecting the image of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose image we are made.

Progressive covenantalism teaches that the entire old covenant law is one unit that is fulfilled in Christ. A new priesthood brought about a new law. You'll find that in Hebrews 7 — that from changing the Aaronic priesthood, or the Levitical priesthood, to the priesthood of Christ, there also comes a change in the law at the same time. We're no longer under the Mosaic law. Christ perfectly kept the old covenant to give us the new covenant. The Christian is not under the law of Moses, but is under the law of Christ. And you can look up Galatians 6 and 1 Corinthians 9, which reference this. In order to determine what is morally binding on Christians, we must view all of Scripture through Christ and the covenant that He has instituted.

Progressive covenantalism teaches that the law of Christ is all of Scripture seen in light of its fulfillment in Christ. We simply look at the law and see — is it fulfilled in Christ? That's the litmus test. And if it hasn't been fulfilled in Christ — like the eternal truth that we are to love God with all our hearts and love our neighbor — we're still bound by that. Even the book of Leviticus still applies to Christians, but not directly, as it must be interpreted in the light and lens of Christ and His atoning work. It applies to us in that we see that Christ is our atoning sacrifice. In Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, He fulfilled the law — not just through annulling it or extending it or intensifying it, but by showing that the law was pointing to Him all along. Remember He says, "You have heard it said of old, but I say to you," right? He is the Lawgiver. The law is but a transcript of the character of Jesus Christ.

Lecture point number 11. Progressive covenantalism asserts that the church does not replace Israel, nor is it to be equated with Israel. The church is related to Israel only indirectly. We talked about this at length in lesson seven when we looked at the church in Israel, and to refresh your memory, I'd encourage you to go back and watch that lesson again or look at your notes. We're stating the same thing here in today's lesson.

Christ is the typological fulfillment of Israel. He embodies their identity. He's the true Son, the true Seed, the true Servant, the true Vine, the true Jeshurun. We talked about that in lesson seven. We're not going to go into that today because of time. He embodies not only their identity, but their mission — reconciling the world. He embodies their offices — that of prophet, priest, and king. That's what Israel's offices were: to be the mediator and representative. Christ is the ultimate Mediator and Representative. And the events — the Passover and the Exodus — Christ is all those things. Christ is the climax of Israel in His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, fulfilling the old covenant and establishing the new covenant.

Through union with Christ, the church is truly Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. We're equated with Israel indirectly in that we are united in the true Israelite. We're united to Christ, right, who is the King of Israel. And in Him we receive all the blessings and all the promises, right? It's in Christ — through faith in Jesus Christ — that we are grafted in to Israel, according to Romans 11. So the church doesn't replace Israel, the church isn't Israel, the church is distinct, but it is related to Israel indirectly through its union with Christ.

Regarding the future of Israel, progressive covenantalism sees no outstanding promises that are specific to Israel as a nation. They would say that the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the Mosaic covenant are fulfilled in Christ. But some see a future conversion of the Jewish people in Romans 11:24–27 — same thing we talked about with covenant theology last week. And we'll look at Romans 11 in detail when we discuss eschatology in a few weeks.

Progressive covenantalism embraces many eschatological outlooks, including historical premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. No single outlook is prescribed. So it doesn't have presuppositions that limit you to only one particular eschatological outlook, right? You can have liberty of conscience to see what Scripture says, and godly men and women disagree on these things, right? You can take the most godly men you can imagine — some of the great commentators — and they're going to be all over the map. One will see the end times unfolding this way, another this way, right? And progressive covenantalism doesn't dictate one single outlook because it doesn't have that presupposition — right, that the church and Israel are separate peoples, separate destinies — which leads to dispensational premillennialism. Both covenantalism and progressive covenantalism don't have that, so there's a variety of voices in regard to how the millennium works in the future.

Lecture point number 14. The key strength of progressive covenantalism is that they focus on God's one plan of redemption centered on Christ, using Scripture's own language.

They like to say that you can read through the Bible and you'd be able to pick up on these covenants and how they unveil Christ and how they find their fulfillment in the New Testament. It's highly doubtful that you would discover the various — say, seven — dispensations of classic dispensationalism through reading the Bible unless you have a Scofield Reference Bible or a Bible with notes in it. It's also highly unlikely that you would pick up on the theological covenants of covenantalism — that being the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, and the covenant of grace and their system — again, without having study notes in your Bible or an outside commentary.

Lecture point number 15. A critique of progressive covenantalism is that because there is not a bent toward a specific eschatological outlook in their system, there may be a tendency to ignore or downplay the eschaton — the last things. It could lead someone to say, "Well, because we don't prescribe a specific outlook, then who cares? Why study it?"

But I think that's not a real serious critique, because many do engage it seriously. In fact, Thomas Schreiner, who is one of the main proponents of this — if you follow him, he's a New Testament scholar — says that there are about 11 different eschatological outlooks and he claims to have held nine or 10 of them over the course of his 30-year professorship. And he's written in support of opposing views at different times during that period. So we're all learning, right?

So that's progressive covenantalism in a nutshell. It basically positions itself as a midway point between dispensationalism and covenantalism, and it seeks to follow the Bible's own storyline of progressively revealing the redemption that's found in Christ Jesus throughout the covenants, finally unveiled in the new covenant.