Covenant Theology, Scripture, and Reformed Confessions — Unit 1: What Is Covenant Theology?

Key Verse

"But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people." (Jeremiah 31:33, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Define the biblical words for "covenant" and explain what a covenant is in Scripture.

2. Explain the main idea of covenant theology: one plan of salvation, in one covenant of grace, shown in different administrations.

3. Name the main covenants of Scripture and the promise that runs through them.

4. Describe in brief how Reformed teachers developed covenant theology, and state the historians' debate about its origins.

5. State three common objections to covenant theology and answer each from Scripture and the confessions.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the confessional Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, for students who belong to it. It is conservative. It holds that the sixty-six books of the Bible are the inspired, inerrant Word of God, and it receives the Reformed confessions as faithful summaries of what Scripture teaches. When it says "we" or "our churches," it means the Presbyterian and Reformed churches that confess the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort, or the Westminster Standards.

Other Christians read the Bible differently, and some historians question how our tradition grew. We state their views fairly and then give our answer. Scripture says, "Test all things; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). The history of the Reformed churches is told in Course 1 and is not repeated here. The doctrines of grace are taught in Course 2. This course asks a different question: how does the whole Bible fit together, and how do our churches summarize it?

Why Begin with the Covenant?

Many believers read the Bible as a collection of separate stories: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus. They enjoy each story, but they cannot say how the stories form one book. Reformed Christians have long answered that the Bible is held together by God's covenant. God made himself known to his people not only as Creator and Judge, but as the One who binds himself to them by promise. "I will be their God, and they shall be My people" is the heart of the covenant, and the sentence returns again and again in Scripture (see Leviticus 26:12; Jeremiah 31:33; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Revelation 21:3).

A pastor who understands this can preach the Old Testament with confidence and joy. He can show his people that Abraham, Moses and David belong to the same family of faith as his own church. He can explain why our churches baptize the children of believers, and why we read Christ in all the Scriptures. Covenant theology is not a hobby for scholars. It is how our tradition reads the Bible as one story.

What Is a Covenant?

The words

The Old Testament word is berit. It is used for agreements between people, such as treaties between nations or pledges between friends, and for the solemn bonds that God makes with his people. The usual way of speaking is to "cut" a covenant, a phrase that recalls the sacrifices that often sealed it (see Genesis 15). The New Testament Greek word is diatheke. It may be translated "covenant" or "testament." When we speak of the Old Testament and the New Testament, we are really saying the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

The meaning

A covenant in Scripture is a solemn relationship between persons, established by promises and sealed by an oath or a sign. It is more than a contract. A contract between equals trades goods or services. A biblical covenant creates a bond of loyalty and love, with promises, obligations and a sign that marks the relationship. In the covenants with Noah, Abraham, Israel and David, God is the one who takes the initiative. He speaks first. He sets the terms. He gives the promise. The people respond with faith and obedience.

The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 7, begins with this point. The distance between God and his creatures is so great that people could never enjoy him as their blessing and reward unless he were pleased to come down to them by way of a covenant. In other words, the covenant is itself an act of God's kindness. We do not climb up to God. He condescends to us.

The Covenants of Scripture

The Bible records several named covenants. We list them briefly here and study them in the next units.

• Noah (Genesis 9). God promises never again to destroy the earth by flood, and he gives the rainbow as a sign. It is a covenant with all living creatures and it preserves the world in which redemption will unfold.

• Abraham (Genesis 12, 15 and 17). God promises Abraham land, many descendants, and blessing for all the families of the earth. He says, "And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you" (Genesis 17:7). The sign is circumcision.

• Moses and Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19 to 24). God redeems Israel from Egypt and gives the law, the tabernacle and the sacrifices. Israel is to be a holy nation among the peoples.

• David (2 Samuel 7; Psalm 89). God promises David a son whose throne will last forever.

• The New Covenant (Jeremiah 31; Luke 22:20). God promises to write his law on his people's hearts and to forgive their sins. Jesus took the cup at the Last Supper and called it the new covenant in his blood.

The Central Claim of Covenant Theology

Reformed theology summarizes the Bible's teaching with this claim: God has one plan of salvation for his people in every age, and he carries it out in the one covenant of grace. The Westminster Confession says the covenant of grace was "administered" differently in the time of the law and in the time of the gospel, but that there are not two covenants of grace differing in substance. It is one covenant under different administrations (chapter 7, sections 5 and 6). The Heidelberg Catechism speaks in the same way when it teaches that believers and their children belong to God's covenant and church (Question 74).

Three truths are packed into this claim.

First, salvation has always been by grace through faith in Christ. Abraham "believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). Paul uses Abraham to show how all people are justified (Romans 4). Old Testament believers looked forward to the promised Redeemer, and we look back to him. The Savior is the same. Jesus said that Abraham "saw" his day and rejoiced (John 8:56).

Second, the people of God are one people. Paul tells Gentile believers that they were once "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel" but are now "fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (Ephesians 2:12, 19). Galatians 3:29 says, "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." The church is not a surprise that interrupted God's plan. It is the fruit of the promise made to Abraham.

Third, the administrations differ in form but not in substance. The Old Testament had sacrifices, a priesthood, a temple and a nation. The New Testament has the finished work of Christ, the preached Word, baptism and the Lord's Supper. The shadows have given way to the reality (Colossians 2:16-17; Hebrews 10:1). Calvin taught this in his Institutes (Book 2, chapters 10 and 11), where he argued that the Old and New Testaments are one in substance and different in manner of administration.

The Three Covenants of Federal Theology

Covenant theology is also called federal theology, from the Latin foedus, which means covenant. Reformed confessions and teachers commonly speak of three covenants.

1. The covenant of redemption. In eternity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit agreed together on the work of saving a people (Unit 2).

2. The covenant of works. God made a covenant with Adam as the representative of all humanity, promising life for obedience and warning of death for disobedience (Unit 2).

3. The covenant of grace. After the fall, God promised a Savior and gathered a people through him, from Adam to the last day (Unit 3).

Adam and Christ are the two great heads, or representatives, of humanity. Paul sets them side by side in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. This is the deepest root of covenant theology. We are not saved or lost merely as individuals. We belong to one of two heads, and we share in what he does.

How Covenant Theology Developed

We do not repeat the history of the Reformed churches here (see Course 1). But a student should know the outline.

The idea that God deals with his people by covenant is as old as the church. The Reformers made it prominent. Huldrych Zwingli used the unity of the covenant to defend the baptism of infants against the Anabaptists. His successor in Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, wrote in 1534 a short work on the one and eternal covenant of God, and he is often called a pioneer of Reformed covenant teaching. John Calvin taught the unity of the Old and New Testaments in the Institutes. In Heidelberg, Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, the men behind the Heidelberg Catechism, used covenant language in their teaching. In the next century the Dutch theologian Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669) built a full historical outline of the covenants, and English and Scottish Puritans did the same. Covenant language then entered the Westminster Confession and Catechisms (1646-47). In Scotland, the National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1643) showed how deeply the idea had shaped the national church.

A debate among historians

Historians do not agree on where Reformed covenant theology came from. Three accounts are common.

One account says it began in Zurich with Zwingli and Bullinger, whose struggle with the Anabaptists led them to stress the single covenant. A second says it was strongest in the Rhineland and Heidelberg, among the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism. A third points to Calvin, though some earlier twentieth-century writers argued that Calvin and the later Reformed teachers were in sharp conflict, so that "federal" theology was a hardening of Calvin's thought.

Our answer is this. Careful study has shown that the Reformers drew on a shared stock of ideas, that several centers contributed, and that Calvin himself taught the unity of the covenant and the sure promises of God. Differences in emphasis among the Reformers are real, and we do not hide them. But the claim that later teachers abandoned Calvin does not stand up. Most important, origins cannot decide whether a doctrine is true. The test is Scripture. A teaching may have been developed late and still be what the Bible says all along. The Trinity was defined in the fourth century, yet it was not invented then.

Objections to Covenant Theology and Our Answers

Objection 1: "The covenant of works" and "the covenant of grace" are not Bible words. The system is imposed on Scripture.

It is true that the phrases do not appear in the Bible, just as "Trinity" does not. The Westminster Confession says that the whole counsel of God includes what is stated in Scripture and also what "by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture" (chapter 1, section 6). The question is whether the Bible teaches the thing. Scripture does speak of covenants (Genesis 9, 15, 17; Exodus 24; 2 Samuel 7; Jeremiah 31). It sets Adam and Christ as two representative heads (Romans 5:12-19). The term "covenant of works" is a short name for what Genesis 2:16-17 and Romans 5 together describe. Hosea 6:7 may refer to Adam's breaking a covenant, though translators and commentators disagree, and we will not rest the doctrine on that verse alone.

Objection 2: Covenant talk turns salvation into a contract and leads to legalism.

Some fear that covenants mean bargains. We answer that biblical covenants are not bargains between equals. The covenant of grace is a gift. God promises, God provides the Mediator, God gives faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). Obedience follows as the fruit of grace, not as its price. The Heidelberg Catechism begins with comfort, not with a demand: our only comfort is that we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ. The covenant is a bond of love first.

Objection 3: The New Testament shows a break with the Old. The church is something new, and Israel and the church must be kept apart.

This is the view of dispensational teaching, and Unit 4 deals with it fully. Here we say only that the New Testament does show a real change, which Hebrews calls a "better covenant" (Hebrews 8:6). But Paul calls the Gentiles "Abraham's seed" and fellow citizens, and he speaks of Jews and Gentiles made into one new man (Ephesians 2:14-16). The change is from promise to fulfillment, not from one people to a second, separate people.

Pastoral Application

A man from a village church joins your congregation. He loves the Lord and reads his Bible daily, but he tells you, "The Old Testament is just history and rules. I don't know what to do with it. I live under the New Testament." His wife adds, "And I don't understand why you baptize little children if they can't believe."

The wise pastor does not scold. First, he thanks them for their honest questions. Second, he opens Jeremiah 31:33 and shows them the promise "I will be their God, and they shall be My people," and then turns to Revelation 21:3, where the same promise is fulfilled at the end of the Bible. He explains that the whole book tells one story: God keeps his promise to his people through Christ. Third, he shows them Abraham in Romans 4 and Galatians 3, and explains that Abraham is a believer of the same kind as they are. Fourth, he promises to teach the baptism question in its own lesson, from Genesis 17 and Acts 2:39, without hurry and without pressure. Finally, he asks the man to read one Old Testament passage each week and ask, "How does this point to Christ and the promise?"

Summary

In Scripture a covenant is a solemn relationship established by God's gracious promise and sealed by a sign. The main covenants are those with Noah, Abraham, Israel at Sinai, David, and the new covenant in Christ. Reformed theology teaches that God has one plan of salvation by grace through faith in Christ, carried out in one covenant of grace under different administrations. Federal theology speaks of the covenants of redemption, works and grace, and sees Adam and Christ as the two heads of humanity. The doctrine grew through Zwingli, Bullinger, Calvin, Ursinus, Olevianus, Cocceius and the Westminster divines, though historians debate its sources. The test of the doctrine is Scripture, and we answer the objections that it is imposed, legalistic, or blind to the newness of the gospel. The covenant is God's kindness: he promises to be our God, and we are his people.

Further Reading

• The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapters 1 and 7 (1646).

• The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), especially Questions 1 and 74.

• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, chapters 10 and 11 (Beveridge translation, 1845).

• Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (1872-73), on the covenants.

• Herman Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants between God and Man (1677), a classic Reformed treatment.

• Heinrich Bullinger, on the one and eternal covenant of God (1534).

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