Introducing Reformed Covenant Theology
Harrison Perkins
Harrison Perkins (PhD, Queen’s University Belfast) is pastor at Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for Study of the Westminster Standards, the online faculty in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, and visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary
Covenant theology forefronts the gospel as the Scripture’s central message, insisting that we see Christ as preeminent from every passage of God’s Word. This commitment directs preaching to be Christ centered and aimed at discipling God’s people. The Great Commission to baptize and to teach disciples to obey everything that Christ commanded then includes how all Scripture would inform us unto Christ and form us more into his likeness. Although not every portion of Scripture applies in the same way, it all applies Christ to us and directs us in his paths of righteousness.
Introduction
We must meet God somewhere. Despite prevailing cultural winds of mystical spirituality, the true God is not accidentally discovered in smoke signal, crop circles, tea leaves, or astrological patterns. As creatures made for communion with God, we need to encounter him. Since God is the Creator, he determines where we get to have that majestic encounter. John Owen (1616–83) wrote about how God delivers all his promises to us now through the one covenant of grace:
But whereas all the promises belong unto the same covenant, with all the grace contained in them and exhibited by them, whoever is interested by faith in that covenant is so in all the promises of God that belong thereunto, and hath an equal right unto them with those unto whom they were first given.[1]
If all God’s promises come to us through the covenant, then an understanding of this covenant relationship is of monumental importance.God has determined that his image-bearing creatures, both in our original integrity and now after the fall, will meet him in the covenant that he makes with us.[2]
A covenant is simply a formal or official bond which establishes the nature of how the people in covenant can and should relate to one another. Still, the Bible teaches us about multiple types of covenants, which all have their role in helping us more deeply understand our present relationship with our Lord. As Psalm 25:14 reminds us, “The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.” The bottom line, however, is that covenant theology is simply about our relationship with God.
This article introduces the main themes and core principles of traditional Reformed covenant theology. Although the historic association of covenant theology with the Reformed tradition may be obvious to some, we are including the adjective “Reformed” simply to recognize that most traditions have a covenant theology. Even in this issue, my friend, Steve Wellum, articulates a covenantal outlook from a Baptist perspective that I believe largely aligns with some core commitments of Reformed covenant theology—obviously we disagree on how to put together some developments in the Bible’s covenantal storyline at least as they pertain to ecclesiology. In other words, this article highlights some core theological commitments belonging to traditional covenant theology alongside the other aspects of our paradigm of biblical theology, precisely because the longstanding concerns driving covenant theology have been our clarity on issues of salvation and how God meets his people.[3]
God and God’s Works: Locating Covenants in the Theological Enterprise
Covenant theology, as with every doctrine, has its specific place among other topics. This section aims to locate how Reformed covenant theology relates to wider theological reflection. More specifically, we are fitting the Reformed use of covenant within the task of systematic theology, primarily because, historically, Reformed theology has used covenant to do more than just rehash and explain the biblical narrative— as important as that endeavor may be.
First, John Webster (1955–2016) has forcefully reminded us that the doctrine of God’s triune life is the supreme category among doctrines, including even the doctrines of salvation.[4] The explanation of salvation, then, has a specific in some ways secondary place within the overarching task of theology to elaborate upon God in himself and then the works of God towards the creatures.[5] Every Christian should want as full an understanding of our relationship with God as God’s revelation permits, and Reformed covenant theology focuses on the principles and dynamics of how God relates to us.
This emphasis on communion with God situates covenant theology within its proper relation to other theological doctrines. Christian theology has a traditional distinction between theologia, discussing God in himself, and oeconomia, delving into God’s works and how we know God according to his works.[6] In Webster’s terms, covenant theology does not directly expound the doctrine of the Trinity, even though it fits within that endeavor as the broadest dogmatic task.[7] Accordingly, covenant theology focuses on God’s works towards the creature, although still keeping in mind that God’s works should then orient us toward the triune God. Since God has life in himself, he is able to be the giver of life to his creatures, and the Scripture indicates that he grants the supreme offer of that life by way of covenant.[8] Hence, covenant can occupy a dominant place in our theological system without being the “center” of Scripture’s theology because God is Scripture’s primary theme but covenant encompasses the discussion of “all things (or at least us) in relation to God.”[9] As daring as it may be, this point suggests that the two encompassing categories of theology are then the Trinity and the covenants, since the covenants include all God’s works toward creatures.[10] The works of God in the covenants are, after all, inseparable from the triune God who performs them.[11]
The lens of communion with God is then meant to highlight that covenant theology is not the end in itself but a category that adds richness to our understanding of how we as God’s creatures have the privilege of knowing the triune God. Although the exposition of theology proper may be the supreme dogmatic task, the fact thatGod made a covenant with his image bearers means that we are the only earthly creatures who have the honor of being able to expound about the majesty of our God. Covenant theology as the expression of our communion with God highlights that intersection between the highest end of humanity to glorify God and enjoy him forever—even in explaining God in theological exposition—and the need for us to understand ourselves in relation to God.[12] So John Calvin argued that true wisdom resides in knowledge of God and of ourselves, but knowledge of both is so inherently linked that they cannot be disconnected.[13] As Webster himself highlighted, “The gospel, that is, concerns the history of fellowship—covenant—between God and creatures; Christian soteriology follows this double theme as it is unfolded in time.”[14] Covenant then is the explanation of how we know our God. God himself remains most important, but we relate to him in covenant.
Second, covenant relates to other theological categories is that it takes seriously the purposes for humanity that God built into creation. God built the potential to obtain a higher existence of new creation into creation as he originally made it (1 Cor. 15:35–49). As Geerhardus Vos famously articulated, “The eschatological is an older strand in revelation than the soteric.”[15] Vos’s point is that God created humanity with the potential to gain the highest possible communion with him in the new creation, and that potential was part of our relationship with God even before our need for salvation from sin. Covenant theology contributes to that premise by outlining that the means to reach that consummate communion with God have always been thoroughly tied to the covenantal structure of our relationship with God. So, the scope is set within the developing trajectory of creation to new creation.[16]
Third, that context then highlights a necessary point about theological method. The most common approach to explaining covenant theology in recent decades has been biblical theology.[17] Briefly, biblical theology, rightly implemented, explores Scripture’s unity in the progress of its narrative as well as in its ongoing development and use of ideas, imagery, and themes throughout Scripture’s unfolding revelation, while systematic theology synthesizes everything Scripture says about a given topic into a categorical statement of the truth.[18] The approach of biblical theology examines how the theme of covenant contributes to the developing storyline of God’s plan as it progresses across the Scripture. The focus is then on the distinct aspects that are attached to the individual covenants—such as the covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Israel under Moses, David, and the new covenant—and what each covenant means for the whole story arc of Scripture. This approach is critically necessary for understanding both the unfolding story of redemption and how the covenants historically condition our experience of God and salvation.[19]
This article, on the other hand, emphasizes the method of systematic theology, emphasizing the categorical payoff of covenantal principles.[20] Although biblical-theological and systematic approaches should stand in harmony, the number of biblical-theological studies of covenant suggests that the time to synthesize the fruit of those exegetical labors into systematic conclusions has come.[21] The inspired account of God’s workings in history has endless riches as the narrative development shows God’s ongoing faithfulness, but the descriptions of God’s historical works can be summarized into categorical statements about God and how he works.[22] Necessarily, even the historical contours of progressive revelation yield concrete categorical conclusions because the immutable God stands behind history working within it and he himself—along with his eternal commitments—does not change with history nor is he realized or shaped by it.[23]
Although systematic theology certainly requires more than lining up proof texts, theology’s fundamental bedrock is to answer God’s own call in the Bible to meditate upon his Word. The Psalter begins by describing how the blessed man is the one who continually thinks about God’s law:
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:1–2)
Meditation on God’s law undoubtedly includes many elements but at least includes reflection upon how the whole of Scripture hangs together as God’s unified story of his relationship with his people. This synthetic approach explains doctrine by reading the point of biblical texts in light of the point in other biblical texts on the assumption that each text coheres together in a unified theological message, which is really nothing more than interpreting Scripture by Scripture. When we think about biblical theological paradigms, it can be easy to get lost in their value apart from their concrete doctrinal implications. Thus, even as this article outlines covenant theology’s hermeneutical principles and understanding of the shape of the historia salutis, we want to keep an eye on the categorical payoff from those issues.[24]
Distinctives and Assumptions
Reformed theology prioritizes the sole, final authority of God’s written Word, explaining how the full scope of our salvation is founded on grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, living in such a way that emphasizes the centrality of the local church, and proclaiming Jesus Christ from the whole of Scripture. Our basic assumptions revolve around these truths being key and central to the Christian life as well as for interpreting Scripture. Our covenant theology is distinct in its commitment to three theological covenants: the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, and the covenant of grace. Each of these categories, highlight a different aspect of the whole picture for understanding the full scope of God’s sovereign plan for history, drawing attention to features of God’s covenantal relations that inform our theological categories.[25] This section, admittedly sparce in its defense of these doctrines so directing readers to more extensive discussions in the footnotes, outlines the basic premises of these three covenants, since they form the backbone of our theological system. Subsequent sections then frame hermeneutical issues and theological implications that further explain why these doctrines’ importance within Reformed theology.
First, in the covenant of redemption, the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit assume particular missions for executing the plan of salvation. The Father arranges salvation by electing some from the mass of fallen humanity and giving them to the Son to redeem. The Son accomplishes salvation by completing his mission to fulfill all the requirements of salvation on our behalf and so procure everlasting life for us. The Spirit applies salvation by joining us to Christ by faith. This covenant has struck many as a speculative imposition upon Scripture but, in truth, is a way of describing the mysterious tensions that Scripture presents about eternal “conversations” among the Godhead.[26]
Space prevents a detailed explorations of this sort of intertextuality, so one example must suffice here.[27] The use of Psalm 110 in Hebrews 7:15–22 provides inspired insight about the trinitarian realities behind the Old Testament. Psalm 110 began by describing a conversation between two persons whom David could call “Lord” (v.1), marking both as divine. Drawing attention to God’s priestly appointment of David’s Lord, Hebrews points out how Psalm 110 was about Christ’s work as the guarantor of the new covenant.
The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Ps 110:4)
Hebrews emphasized that this announcement in Psalm 110 appointed Christ as the everlastingly effective high priest after Melchizedek’s order. The point we need to note is that the inspired narratives about Jesus’s life never record God stating this oath to Christ during his earthly ministry. The New Testament often refers to Psalm 110, although never depicting the Father as saying these words to the Son during his time on earth. Psalm 110, therefore, is not simply prophetic about Christ’s ministry but also records God’s eternal counsel whereby the Father appointed the Son as the everlasting priest to save his people. In Psalm 110, the Father speaks to the pre-incarnate Son concerning his incarnate mission. Hebrews 7:22 says, “This,” referring to God’s words in Psalm 110:4, “makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.” God from eternity appointed Christ as the effectual covenant mediator. This Psalm provides insight into the New Testament’s perspective on how passages in the Old Testament actually describe a covenantal relation among the persons of the Godhead within the plan of salvation.
The covenant of redemption is a way of accounting for the biblical depictions of eternal trinitarian interactions concerning something dear to the heart of every Christian: Christ’s role as our saving mediator. It is an indispensable truth of all true Christian theology that Christ is the redeemer of his people, coming from God to act on our account. The Westminster Confession of Faith 8.1 explains,
It pleased God, in his eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, to be the Mediator between God and Man, the Prophet, Priest, and King; the Head and Saviour of his Church, the Heir of all things, and Judge of the world; unto whom he did, from all eternity, give a people to be his seed, and to be by him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified.[28]
At least the first stretch of this statement ought to find wide acceptance among Christians from all traditions, that the triune God has decreed that the eternal Son would come in the incarnation, serving as mediator between God and man to effect salvation for his people (Is. 7:14; Is. 45:22–25; Matt. 1:21–23).[29] The closing addition rounds out the basic premises of the Reformed doctrine of the covenant of redemption, stating that God gave the elect to the Son as those for whom he would act as mediator (Jn. 6:38–40; Jn. 10:25–30; Jn. 17:2, 6–7, 9).[30] The covenant of redemption is the Reformed way of describing the eternal foundations for the triune God’s plan of redemption wherein Christ performs his incarnate obedience as the second Adam on behalf of his people, earning his own (re)exalted status in resurrection life as well as salvation for those given to him (Phil. 2:5–11).[31]
Several corollaries are worth noting here. First, from a hermeneutical vantage point, the covenant of redemption grows from an obviously intertextual approach to reading Scripture. The resolution of certain tensions in Old Testament passages through the New Testament’s rereading of redemptive history in light of Christ’s first advent results in our conclusions concerning this covenant.[32] Second, the covenant of redemption forges the template for the covenant of works and the covenant of grace as they take place in history. In this covenant, the incarnate Son had to fulfill the law and make satisfaction for his people’s sin, reflecting the condition and consequences, as we will see shortly, from Adam’s first condition in covenant with God in the Garden of Eden. On the other hand, Christ’s fulfillment of this office as the last Adam for his people is the legal grounds according to God’s natural justice for him to provide grace. The Westminster Larger Catechism 31 reflects this idea: “The Covenant of Grace was made with Christ, as the second Adam, and, in him with all the elect, as his seed.”[33] In other words, the covenant of redemption was a covenant of works for the Son but a covenant of grace for us.
Second, in the covenant of works, by which God related to Adam before the fall, God offered reward based on Adam’s perfect obedience. On the one hand, this covenant expresses a traditional Augustinian principle concerning original sin, namely that God appointed Adam as the representative of all humanity, meaning that Adam’s success or failure determined whether all humanity would receive reward or condemnation. Christians know that Adam failed, fell into sin, and so plunged the rest of us into sin with him.[34]
More specifically, this covenant offered the potential of glorified life and the beatific vision to Adam if he met the terms of the covenant by rendering perfect obedience and passing the probationary test with the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We need not spend more time on the point about the tree, since the biblical record in Genesis 3 plainly recounts Adam’s sin and confessionally minded Christians will all share the conclusion that Adam’s fall brought sin into the world with consequences for us all, including our need for salvation.[35] The notion of Adam’s reward for his obedience likely needs further explanation.
The basic premise standing behind this reward aspect of the covenant of works is that God created humanity with the prospect of advancing into confirmed righteousness and deeper communion with God on the other side of Adam’s probation. Respectively, Geerhardus Vos’s maxim for this point is that eschatology precedes soteriology, meaning that we had the potential for new creation life even before the fall.[36] G. K. Beale, followed also by Stephen Wellum and Peter Gentry in the progressive covenantalism trajectory, has argued at length that the creation order contains themes of kingship, dominion, temple/God’s presence, and priesthood that relate Adam’s status as God’s image bearer to a higher destiny.[37] Although these arguments are framed in a particular biblical-theological hue, the conclusion is a highly traditional Christian idea that can be traced back through the doctrine of the beatific vision, which became a major theme in the medieval period concerning the hope for attaining the sight of God in a consummate way.
If all God’s promises come to us through the covenant, then an understanding of this covenant relationship is of monumental importance.God has determined that his image-bearing creatures, both in our original integrity and now after the fall, will meet him in the covenant that he makes with us.
Two sides pertain to this eschatological destiny bound to creation. One of the clearest biblical expressions of the prospect for advancing to glorified life is in 1 Corinthians 15:44–46:
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.
In his case for the necessity of believing in the bodily resurrection at Christ’s return, Paul appealed to Adam’s own creation condition, arguing on account of his citation of Genesis 2:7 that the original natural body always entailed a corresponding spiritual body. Certainly, Paul meant that Adam’s potential body was characterized by spiritual glorification, rather than any notion of disembodiment, since he was contending for the bodily resurrection.[38] The covenant of works was then oriented toward a new creation telos.
The other side to this eschatological orientation is the condition of perfect obedience. Few if any question that Adam had to be truly faithful to God and his obligations before the Lord. Despite some modern exceptions wherein the fallen and corrupt condition is increated with the primeval state, traditional Christianity has holistically accepted that sin is a wicked intrusion into God’s ordering of the world. Thus, Reformed covenant theology has historically affirmed that Adam’s obedience in keeping the natural law engraved on his heart and to the probationary command about the tree of knowledge was the condition for obtaining that eschatological, glorified life. As Paul taught in Romans 2:13–15,
For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.
The covenant of works is then called such because the law was its condition for reaching our consummate, new creation state.[39]
Because Adam broke the covenant of works, the path to everlasting life by our own obedience is forever closed. Paul explained this aspect of sin’s curse in Galatians 3:10–11,
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Human nature remains hardwired with an orientation to our eschatological destiny, but sin has destroyed our ability to reach it according to our natural capacities, since the covenant of works was founded on our natural strength to keep the law.[40] Sinners, therefore, need another route to new creation communion with God other than one that rests about our works.
Third, and following upon the just mentioned problem, the covenant of grace is God’s one way of saving his people from their sin by Christ’s work, which is applied to believers in history through each biblical covenant, which unifies the Triune God’s saving work from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22. God has always saved his people by administering the same promise of grace through various historical covenants, but the underlying premise of the entire covenant of grace is that God has been our God because of Christ’s work. James Ussher (1581–1656) explained, “What then is the sum of the covenant of grace? That God will be our God and give us Life everlasting in Christ, if we receive him, being freely by his Father offered unto us.”[41] So, in contrast to the covenant of works, wherein glorified life in new creation communion with God depended upon our own obedience, the covenant of grace charts a path to our eschatological destiny by faith in Jesus Christ.[42]
This doctrine arguably seems most out of step with other traditions in terms of their biblical theological systems and sets up our later sections on hermeneutics and theological commitments. Although later sections pull at those implications in greater depth, we should clarify one issue now: covenant theology is often accused of “flattening” the Scripture via the doctrine of the covenant of grace, so we should state now that covenant theology holds to some unity and diversity concerning redemptive history. We affirm historical diversity among the covenants as the historia salutis develops. Our more fundamental point in positing one covenant of grace concerns unity across Scripture in soteriology, namely the ordo salutis functions the same way throughout redemptive history—as I will defend below. Although the discussions of the covenant of redemption and covenant of works contained brief exegetical defenses, we are going to bypass that at this exact junction because the covenant of grace will occupy our majority focus under our explorations of hermeneutics as well as the issue of continuity and discontinuity.
Hermeneutics
This section outlines four key hermeneutical factors undergirding covenant theology’s approach to reading Scripture. The principles discussed here reveal that covenant theology has room for an eclectic appropriation of hermeneutical methods so long as they cohere with certain fundamental commitments about what Scripture is and its function in relating God to his people. Thus, Reformed covenant theology holistically contains diverse approaches to particular biblical passages and interpretive issues precisely because it has a natural flexibility in relation to aspects of hermeneutical methods, providing that they square with basic theological premises about how the Bible operates within the divine economy.
We Must Read the Bible in the Posture as Someone in Covenant with God
The Scripture is the divine address to God’s covenant people. Covenant theology is, again, simply about our relationship with God quite basically because God forges covenants as the way he relates to us. Scripture is God’s covenantal word to his people. Like the constitution is a document with relational and ethical ramifications for living in the United States because it grounds the government of the American people, Scripture is a document with relational, ethical, and doctrinal ramifications precisely because it grounds the government of God’s people. We must, therefore, read Scripture as God address to us with all that this posture entails about being drawn into and included in the story it tells of the gospel throughout the age, and what this posture entails about being ready to submit ourselves into this covenantal governance.
That postural point for our hermeneutics has further concrete entailment for our paradigm of biblical theology. We cannot stand aloof analyzing Scripture without reckoning with God’s address to us through Scripture. More pointedly our hermeneutical method must account for what Scripture is and who we are in relation to it: because Scripture is the product of the triune God as a communication to his people, we cannot merely describe its features but must listen to what it prescribes for us. The proper use of biblical theology is a necessary but descriptive enterprise that accounts for Scripture’s interconnected development. Nevertheless, describing those intertextual features on its own comes short of reaching prescriptive conclusions from our exegesis. In other words, biblical theology stalls out the whole hermeneutical process if we do not follow that analysis all the way to systematic conclusions that tells us roundly something about God and how we are to live with him. The hermeneutical payoff from this postural consideration is that we must interpret Scripture as if it is still living and active as God’s instrument to address us with what are meant to know about him and our relationship with him. We must treat Scripture as God’s Word and God’s Word to us.
We must read Scripture as God’s Covenant (Revelatory) Discourse
The only way to understand truly what the Bible means is first to understand what the Bible is.[43] We must resist the urge to interpret Scripture as if it is a product of only historical factors. Since modernity, the focus in biblical studies has been on the historical processes and backgrounds that gave us the Bible and shaped its philological and conceptual contours. To interpret Scripture rightly, we also need to reckon with how it is the product of the triune God who inspired it. If the triune God inspired Scripture, as covenant theology presumes as a hermeneutical foundation, then Scripture must be holistically about the triuneGod.[44]
We interpret the Bible then as to see it as communication from and about the true God. He gave it to us as the medium of his covenantal discourse. The Scripture is the covenantal constitution of the people of God, who binds his people to himself and uses that covenant as the way that we know him.[45] Covenant is, therefore, not a mere feature of Scripture since Scripture came to us through God’s covenant with us. On the conservative premise, which I hold, that Moses was the human author of the Pentateuch, God gave us the Scripture’s introductory books as part of making his covenant with Israel at Sinai. We cannot then reduce covenant to something inScripture, since Scripture is covenantal by nature. We must reckon with how, regardless how clear it might have been to any original author, the triune God made these covenants with his people as part of his developing plan for redemptive history.
The Scripture is then inescapably theological. Exegesis, properly done, cannot be limited to grammatical-historical word studies and analysis but must include reasoning theologically toward the Scripture’s subject matter, namely God and all things in relation to God.[46] We must grab hold of the rationale for the words of Scripture, owning the realities that must give rise to God’s inspired wording as much as the words themselves. At times, we must ask the question, what theological assumption makes the Scripture’s inspired wording most comprehensible?
We must Read Scripture as though it Were Given to His Covenant People
Covenant theology, in its classic form, has attempted to be non-innovative. Whatever one might make of the correctness of its teaching, the Reformed tradition has perceived its covenant theology as aligned with ecumenical concerns and trajectories. In the church’s earliest centuries, ancient theologians like Justin Martyr and the author of The Epistle of Barnabas were reaching for the doctrine of the covenant, specifically regarding the relationship of the church to God’s old covenant people, to explain Christianity’s place in God’s redemptive plan as they answered challenges from Judaism and the Roman authorities concerning the church’s origins.[47] In developing a system of covenant theology, the Reformed tradition has long saw itself in continuity with similar concerns raised from the earliest years after Christ’s ascension. The point was never that our covenant theology is exhaustively identical to how the ancients explained these issues but that we stand in the same trajectory of appeal to the covenants.
Hermeneutically, covenant theology then prioritizes reading and interpreting Scripture with the church. The doctrine of Scripture alonecan be easily bent into a practice of “me alone.” The Bible, not the tradition, is our only infallible rule of faith and practice. Nevertheless, to read Scripture as if I can interpret it accurately apart from considering and listening to how the church of ages past and in the present has understood its message is like trying to play baseball by yourself: it was designed to be a team sport and malfunctions when done in isolation. We must remember that Scripture was given to God’s covenant people, entailing that the corporate body must be active in confession the Bible’ truths. If we develop new systems of doctrine that suggest the historical church has never clearly grasped central aspects of holy Scripture, our theological inclinations will misfire all the way down the line because we have failed to reckon with what the Scripture is in relation to the church.[48] Covenant theology is, therefore, committed to reading Scripture as the people of God, resisting the pressure to be fully shackled to the parameters of exclusively modern approaches to biblical interpretation.
The New Testament Reveals that the Old Testament
Was about the Same Divine Realities
The phrase, “according to the Scripture,” forms a basic principle for understanding how God has been working his Christological purposes throughout redemptive history by using the covenants. The matters of “first importance” in the gospel concerning Christ’s death for our sin, burial, and resurrection were all “in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3–4). God promised the gospel “concerning his Son” throughout the ages “in the holy Scriptures” (Rom. 1:1–6). The New Testament realities of Christ and his work were the mystery long made known through God’s revealed Word in his previous covenants (Heb. 1:1–2; Rom. 16:25; Eph. 1:7–10; Eph. 3:1–10; Col. 1:24–27; Col. 2:2).
From standpoint of our theological systems, we must account hermeneutically for the Christological ground of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. From a backward-facing perspective, Christ and his work accords with Scripture inasmuch as he recapitulated the Old Testament narrative and structures unto fulfillment. From a forward-facing perspective, God set the Old Testament narrative and structures in place precisely because of the Christological realities determined from eternity in the covenant of redemption. In other words, the Old Testament has a Christological ground. This ground is arguably the key feature of the hermeneutics in covenant theology.
Thus, this Christological ground needs an example and defense. In Hebrews, 8:3–5, the author explains,
For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.
The overall argument in this section of Hebrews is the preeminence, permanence, and perfection of Christ’s priesthood. Here, the author explains why the Old Testament priests were ineffectual in bringing about the promises that Christ has procured. His contention was that those priests were mere copies of the heavenly reality.[49] In other words, a higher reality determined why God set these Old Testament structures in place, namely they had a Christological ground. The reality of the eternal Son appointed from eternity as mediator for the elect shaped how God contoured redemptive history and established features of covenantal life to relate to his people. The Christological reality was not plainly clear until the Son came in his incarnation and wrought the work of redemption. Nevertheless, as Westminster Confession of Faith 8.6 articulates “the virtue, efficacy, and benefits” of Christ’s work “were communicated unto the elect, in all ages successively from the beginning of the world, in and by those promises, types, and sacrifices.”[50] Although contributing in diverse ways to the development of history itself as it progressed toward fulfillment in Christ, the Old Testament’s Christological ground meant that the features of covenantal life in the old economy distributed the same spiritual realities on account of which they were instituted in the first place.
This premise of the Old Testament’s Christological ground then explains the New Testament perspective on Christ’s own relationship to the old covenant Scriptures. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus appeared to two of his disciples and opened the Scripture for them. His summary point was that “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Lk. 24:44) The old covenant Scriptures were written about Christ, entailing that the features of redemptive history recorded therein were shaped by their Christological ground. Recounting the rationale for justification by faith alone, which rests upon the finished work of Christ alone, as exemplified in the Old Testament, Paul interpreted Genesis 15:6to mean that “the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also.” (Rom. 4:23–24) Moreover, not only are the realities of salvation mirrored between the Testaments, always having basis in Christ and his work applied by faith before and after he came, the Old Testament events themselves occurred in God’s providence and were recorded in holy Scripture for the sake of God’s Christological purposes: “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” (1 Cor. 10:6) Christ is then Scripture’s all-encompassing reality, the ground of why God shaped the Old Testament economy in the way he did and why he inspired the Scriptures to be about Christ in advance (Gal. 3:8).
Continuity and Discontinuity
Concerning the relationship of the Old and New Testaments, traditional covenant theology balances continuity in certain spiritual realities with tempered discontinuity in the progress of redemptive history. Stated more pointedly, covenant theology maintains specific theological and soteriological stability along with real historical dynamism.
On this issue, misperceptions may well prevail among other traditions as they observe covenant theology, possibly on account of reasons within covenant theology itself. Several historical factors have perhaps led covenant theologians to set forth unbalanced and uneven presentations of our biblical-theological system. In the twentieth-century, numerous issues led to a loss of Reformed theology’s classic moorings. These debates honed discussion on internal issues that are only now restabilizing, producing a lot of literature attuned only to intra-Reformed discussions. On the other hand, our limited attention in the twentieth century to external discussions prioritized distinguishing our covenant theology from dispensationalism, which we often perceived to be the default and presumed theological outlook. Although dispensationalism’s prevailing status may be waning in American theological discussions, older literature on covenant theology likely emphasized continuity so heavily in response to dispensationalism that we may have eclipsed the ways that we perceive discontinuity.[51]
Given that admission, perhaps we ought to start with covenant theology and discontinuity. Stephen Wellum outlined progressive covenantalism’s view of redemptive history’s progression, stating, “Progressive covenantalism argues that the Bible presents a plurality of covenants that progressively reveal our triune God’s one plan redemptive plan for his one covenant people, which reaches its fulfillment and terminus in Christ and the new covenant.”[52] Covenant theology heartily agrees with this view of development in that redemptive history did truly need to progress unto Christ. The Old Testament was the age of promises, the New the age of fulfillment. The Old Testament limited the covenant community to one genealogical line, the New expands it constitutionally to include believers from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Religious life in the old covenant prescribes rituals and practices that were all-encompassing, but now the new covenant requires worship and devotion that is relatively simple and has a more patently internal focus.
The plurality of biblical covenants served varying historical purposes to drive forward the progress of redemptive history. They were not equivalent to one another in their historical function. God’s people came to greater clarity about what salvation meant throughout the progression of covenants, especially in the transition to the new covenant. The shape of God’s people morphed, admittedly for covenant theology not in the way that our Baptists friends affirm, as God variously angled the scope of particular covenants from the family of Abraham to the nation of Israel to the new covenant’s inclusion of the gentiles. Each covenant made its own contribution to the development of covenantal history as Noah laid a foundation of common grace, Abraham forged the promise of redemption, Moses placed God’s people under the legal pedagogue to preserve and teach them unto salvation by grace alone, David focused the promises in the coming king, and the new covenant revealed the culmination of all those historical factors driving home and leading to our need for Christ. In terms of the history of salvation (historia salutis), covenant theology affirmed multiform development driven by the successive covenants.[53]
At a theological level, Christ unified the various covenants of the old economy because he has always been active as the saving mediator for every believer since the beginning of the world. Jude 5 says, “Now, I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus after saving a people out of the land of Egypt later destroyed those who did not believe.”[54] Notably, Jude referred to the eternal Son by his incarnate name, signaling that he was active in his role as mediator throughout the Old Testament period. In 1 Corinthians 10:1–6, Paul also interpreted Old Testament as including Christ’s activity and presence, concluding, “They drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” When, in Romans 4:1–12, Paul appealed to Abraham and David as examples of how justification occurs by faith alone for believers in the new covenant, his logic works only if their justification had the same basis and mechanics as ours does today: namely, Christ’s righteousness was imputed to believers by faith alone before and after Christ’s coming. In other words, covenant theology’s most important point of continuity concerns the order of salvation (ordo salutis) to affirm that salvation has always been by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
Two other areas of continuity include the moral law and the people of God. The Reformed view of creation teaches that God created humanity in his image with the moral law written on our hearts.[55] This moral law is natural to our constitution as God’s image bearers because it is a description of God’s own character, which we are meant to reflect. In the Mosaic covenant, God summarized this moral, natural law in the Ten Commandments. Hence, Reformed covenant theology does not believe that any specifically Mosaic law carries into the new covenant. We do believe that the natural law, which was specially revealed again among other positive and ceremonial laws, still pertains to all humanity. The unity of the people of God simply means that we believe the church is the new covenant Israel and that God is fulfilling the promises he made to Israel in the church.
Theological Commitments and Themes
In covenant theology, two theological corollaries come to the fore from these issues of continuity and discontinuity.
Law and Gospel
Covenant theology’s theological category of the covenant of grace relates to several doctrines but pertains fundamentally to a soteriological reality. Its purpose in our doctrinal system is not to flatten the real contours of redemptive history as it develops. Rather, it means to underscore that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus Christ (Jn. 14:6), which is a reality that applies both before and after the Son’s arrival in the incarnation. Although we can agree across theological camps that the covenants progress one plan of salvation at the historical level, Reformed covenant theology emphasizes that the only way of salvation has always been through faith alone in Christ alone.
This issue explains why Reformed theology has often divided covenants into two categories. Although sometimes our appropriation of some distinctions about differing types of ancient Near Eastern treaties has not made the point clearly, the main issue concerns the basis of salvation.[56] Whatever contours each historical covenant might have had after the fall, the basis of salvation for believers in each was always grace alone.[57] The covenant of works was the only true and pure law covenant, while each covenant after the fall promulgated grace through Christ the mediator as the basis of our right standing with God.
The covenant of grace simply underscores that the law and the gospel cannot be mixed concerning the basis of our justification. The covenant of works was broken. Across the ages of redemptive history, therefore, salvation had to be according to the gospel of grace. If the accusation that covenant theology flattens redemptive history means that we make the whole Bible about Christ as the grounds of salvation, then at least this covenant theologian is happy to be called flat as a pancake or as an Oklahoma highway. The desire for due justice to the changing contours of redemptive history will not override the more basic commitment to the Christological basis of the whole canon nor to Christ as the sole ground of salvation throughout the differing covenantal epochs. The new covenant preaching of the gospel clarified the mystery that had always been active unto salvation: Christ as the mediator for all who believe in him.
Substance and Administration
The other distinction that rises from the preceding discussion concerns how Christ was given to believers throughout redemptive history. Covenant theology has traditionally distinguished the substanceof the one covenant of grace, which encompasses all redemptive history, from its various administrations. This distinction, as outlined above, does not entail that each covenant is the same at the historical level. It does mean that certain theological commitments pertain to every covenant. As all biblical Christians agree, the same God authored each covenant of the purposes of his glory in driving history salvation in Christ. Furthermore, each covenant offered the same way of salvation to everyone who believed. The arguments above about Christ as the mediator for believers across the Testaments points to the reality that everyone with true faith always received their spiritual and saving blessings on account of Christ. The substance received by faith under each covenant was Christ and his benefits.
The other side of the distinction, namely administration, brings us in some ways to a culminating consideration, at least in terms of its practical value for the Christian life: the necessity and majesty of the church.[58] Although Christ has always been the substance of each historical covenant since the fall, those covenants contain ordinances that function to grant Christ and his benefits to believers as they participated in the covenant community. Although that community has looked differently across various covenants, the place where we receive Christ in the new covenant is the church.
Reformed theology holistically prioritizes Word, sacrament, and prayer as the “outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption.”[59] These means of grace are the features of our covenantal life that God uses to create, sustain, and nourish our faith in the Savior. Although the sacraments of the new covenant are baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the sacraments of the old economy included a multiplicity of ordinances, types, shadows, and ceremonies that God still used as means of fostering the same sort of faith for his elect under the Old Testament administrations, specifically faith in Christ. The soteriological difference between Old and New Testament amounts primarily to the forward or backward orientation of the believer’s faith: Old Testament saints believed in Christ who would come (incarnandus) and new covenant saints believe in Christ who has come (incarnatus).[60] This area of continuity is a principle commitment of covenant theology, explaining what we primarily mean by the unity of the covenant of grace. Each historical covenant had external features that God used as means of grace to make and grow faith in Christ.
Conclusion
Covenant theology has its primary concern in the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ for understanding all Scripture. Its robust theological orientation may rub with friction against biblical-theological systems with a different sense for how far strictly grammatical-historical hermeneutics can get us in fathoming God’s purposes in his revealed Word. Its fundamental commitments, however, prioritize issues relating to the very core of life with God.
According to covenant theology, every historical covenant has facilitated worship of the true God. Even before the fall, Adam’s obedience to God’s commandments was the way he would show his love for God (Jn. 14:15), meaning that the covenant of works facilitated creationally ordered worship. Since the fall, God has continually covenanted with his people to provide us with a place to meet him for worship and discipleship.
Covenant theology forefronts the gospel as the Scripture’s central message, insisting that we see Christ as preeminent from every passage of God’s Word. This commitment directs preaching to be Christ centered and aimed at discipling God’s people. The Great Commission to baptize and to teach disciples to obey everything that Christ commanded then includes how all Scripture would inform us unto Christ and form us more into his likeness. Although not every portion of Scripture applies in the same way, it all applies Christ to us and directs us in his paths of righteousness.
The structure of covenant theology also then sends us all into the church as the true place of discipleship. Christ saves us as individuals but saves us into his community (Eph. 1:3–11; Eph. 3:7–12; 1 Cor. 12:12–31). Having been joined to Christ, we are joined to one another. The church is then the sphere of our sanctification as God works upon us through his ordinary means of grace in Word, sacrament, and prayer. God has not left us to traverse the terrain of this pilgrim age aimlessly but has given us pastors, elders, and the fellowship of the saints so that we might bear one another’s burdens and keep one another focused on the vision of our homeland in the age to come. When Christ returns, faith will give way to sight and we will see the God of the covenant in full glory, having been made fully like our older brother.
[1] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. by William H. Goold (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1850), 4:261.
[2] Michael Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 3–21; Michael S. Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 35–79, 151–86.
[3] Michael S. Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006); Michael S. Horton, “Covenant,” in Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 434–45.
[4] John Webster, “Rector et Iudex Super Genera Doctrinarum? The Place of the Doctrine of Justification,” in God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology Volume I: God and the Works of God (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 159–61.
[5] John Webster, “‘It was the Will of the Lord to Bruise Him’: Soteriology and the Doctrine of God,” God without Measure I, 143–57.
[6] Stephen J. Duby, God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology (Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019).
[7] Webster, “Rector et Iudex,” 159.
[8] Webster, “It was the Will of the Lord to Bruise Him,” 152–57; Webster, “Rector et Iudex,” 159–61.
[9] Rightly, Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum similarly nuance covenant’s place within the scope of the theological discipline. Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 31–33.
[10] Compare with the categorical suggestions of Trinity and creation or Trinity and atonement: John Webster, “Non ex Aequo: God’s Relation to Creatures,” in God without Measure I, 115–26; Webster, “Rector et Iudex,” 159–76; Fred Sanders, Fountain of Salvation: Trinity and Soteriology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021), 54–69.
[11] The reverse— that God is inseparable from the covenants— is not true since God would be God as he is in se regardless of whether he had created and covenanted with us.
[12] Webster, “Rector et Iudex,” 164.
[13] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 1.1.1–3.
[14] Webster, “It was the Will of the Lord to Bruise Him,” 143.
[15] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1988), 140.
[16] G. K. Beale has highlighted this new creation trajectory as a main theme of the New Testament’s explanation of history’s culmination and unfolding in Christ; A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011).
[17] For example, O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1981); Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Overland Park, KS: Two Age Press, 2000); Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God’s Unfolding Purpose (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007); Thomas R. Schreiner, Covenant and God’s Purpose for the World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017); Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant; Guy Prentiss Waters, J. Nicholas Reid, and John R. Muether, eds., Covenant Theology: Biblical, Theological, and Historical Perspectives (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020); Daniel I. Block, Covenant: The Framework of God’s Grand Plan of Redemption (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021); Stephen G. Myers, God to Us: Covenant Theology in Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2021).
[18] On biblical theology: Vos, Biblical Theology, 5–9, 16–18; J. V. Fesko, “On the Antiquity of Biblical Theology,” in Lane G. Tipton and Jeffrey C. Waddington (eds.), Resurrection and Eschatology: Theology in Service of the Church. Essays in Honor of Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2008), 443-77; Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 39–47.
[19] R. Michael Allen, Reformed Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 34.
[20] Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Idea of Systematic Theology,” in Studies in Theology (Oxford: OUP, 1932), 49–87; Geerhardus Vos, “The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Phillipsburg NJ: P&R, 1980), 3–24; John Murray, “Systematic Theology,” in Collected Writings of John Murray (Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), 4:1–21; Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 39–50.
[21] Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 220–64; Vos, Biblical Theology, 15–16.
[22] Horton, Lord and Servant, 22–65; Webster, “Rector et Iudex,” 162–64.
[23] Michael Allen, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology—Part Two,” Journal of Reformed Theology 14, no. 4 (2020): 344–57.
[24] The rest of this article reworks or compresses more extended arguments from Harrison Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2024). Obviously, I cannot defend the whole scope of Reformed covenant theology with adequate exegetical, theological, and historical rigor in the space of this article, so point readers beyond this introductory essay to that more substantive case.
[25] These summaries draw from Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 7–9.
[26] For more extensive explanation and defense, see J. V. Fesko, The Covenant of Redemption: Origins, Development, and Reception (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016); Fesko, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption (Fearn, UK: Mentor, 2016); David VanDrunen and R. Scott Clark, “The Covenant Before the Covenants,” in R. Scott Clark, ed., Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2007), 167–96; Guy M. Richard, “The Covenant of Redemption,” in Guy Prentiss Waters, J. Nicholas Reid, and John R. Muether, eds., Covenant Theology: Biblical, Theological, and Historical Perspectives (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 43–62; Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 78–82.
[27] Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 101–84 provides detailed defense of the biblical and theological foundations for the covenant of redemption.
[28] Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1877), 3:619.
[29] For more on the trinitarian and eternal scope of the Son’s appointment as mediator, especially from the perspective of classical theism, see Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 101–23.
[30] Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 131–48.
[31] Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 144–48, 171–82.
[32] Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 123–29.
[33] John R. Bower, The Larger Catechism: A Critical Text and Introduction (Principal Documents of the Westminster Assembly; Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 71.
[34] For more extensive explanation and defense, see J. V. Fesko, The Covenant of Works: The Origins, Development, and Reception of the Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); J. V. Fesko, Adam and the Covenant of Works (Fearn, UK: Mentor, 2021); Michael S. Horton, “Covenant Theology,” in Brent E. Parker and Richard J. Lucas, eds., Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies: Four Views on the Continuity of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 41–52; Richard P. Belcher Jr., “The Covenant of Works in the Old Testament,” in Waters et al, Covenant Theology, 63–78; Guy Prentiss Waters, “The Covenant of Works in the New Testament,” in Waters et al, Covenant Theology, 79–98; Horton, Lord and Servant, 91–155; Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 83–104; Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 19–98.
[35] Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 41–45.
[36] Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1930; repr. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1994), 60; Vos, Biblical Theology, 140.
[37] G. K. Beale, Union with the Resurrected Christ: Eschatological New Creation and New Testament Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023), 21–130; Beale, New Testament Biblical Theology, 29–87, 381–465; Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 666–85.
[38] Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 56–75.
[39] Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 49– 56, 449–58.
[40] For example, Westminster Confession of Faith 4.2, in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 3:611; Robert Rollock, Tractatus De Vocatione Efficaci (Edinburgh, 1597), 9; Herman Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants between God and Man, trans. William Crookshank, 2 vol. (Edinburgh: Thomas Turnbull, 1803), 1.2.13; Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003–2008), 2:567.
[41] James Ussher, A Body of Divinitie (London, 1645), 159.
[42] For more extensive explanation and defense of the covenant of grace, see Horton, “Covenant Theology,” 52–60; Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 104–7; Horton, Lord and Servant, 159–270; Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 187–441.
[43] Michael Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 1–19, 147–264; Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 109–18.
[44] Scott R. Swain, The Trinity and the Bible: On Theological Interpretation (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), 122–31.
[45] Scott R. Swain, Trinity, Revelation, and Reading: A Theological Introduction to the Bible and its Interpretation (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 4–10.
[46] R. B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman, Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), 232–34.
[47] Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 191–93.
[48] Swain, Trinity, Revelation, and Reading, 100–18.
[49] Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 55–65.
[50] Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 3:621–22.
[51] Daniel G. Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2023).
[52] Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 35 (italics original).
[53] Michael S. Horton, “Covenant Theology,” in Brent E. Parker and Richard J. Lucas, eds., Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies: Four Views on the Continuity of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 52–72.
[54] My translation. Regarding the text critical issue in Jude 5 of whether the original text was Ἰησοῦς or κύριος, the evidence weighs decisively in favor of the former, especially considering the lectio difficilior rule, see Gene L. Green, Jude and 2 Peter (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 64–65, 77–78.
[55] Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 29–34.
[56] As pointed out in Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 36.
[57] Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007); Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 187–270.
[58] Michael S. Horton, People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008); Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 129–72; Horton, “Covenant Theology,” 60–72; Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 273–441.
[59] Westminster Shorter Catechism 88; Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 3:695.
[60] Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology, 101–23, 187–216.