The “Covenant” in Theology

This was a presentation made many years ago. I found it on an old hard drive. 

It may still have some use, today. ~MTR

The “Covenant” in Theology: An Historical and Theological Overview

Introduction:

The doctrines of Covenant theology have been attacked recently as something new and therefore a theological innovation begun in the Reformation.  What has come under the special scrutiny of some is the notion of a specific Reformed Baptist Covenant Theology,  I hope to lay out before you some of the historical lineage of the theological idea of covenant as the foundations upon which Federalism and Covenant Theology are build, at least in part. And, in so doing, tie it to the idea of Covenant found in our Confession.

All “good” theological reflection ought to have a foundational exegetical component, a theological grid into which it fits and the test of history applied to it.  Good exegesis plus good systematics plus good historical theology yields good theological conclusions.  If any of the three methods are skewed, the results may be therefore tainted.  There is a lot of work to the theological craft, is one is to do it thoroughly.

The Concept of Covenant

The use of the concept and word covenant in theological musings is of an ancient pedigree.  It is not something entirely new begun during and after the Reformation.  Although that is when it achieves its main importance for our purposes. Covenant as a theological term is found in the Old Testament, especially in the writings of Moses and the Prophets.  It is used in the New Testament especially by Paul and the writer to the Hebrews. 

Apostolic Fathers

Covenant and specific covenants are found as important theological concepts in the history of the Church and her theology.  We find it early on in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers as they used the notion of compact or contract between God and man as regards salvation and man and man as regards Church membership. It is found in the Latin Fathers in abundance--relatively speaking. 

It must be admitted that the lion’s share of these references address issues of the Old Covenant, the New Covenant or the Ark of the Covenant (especially as analogous to the Christian with God’s Law secured on the inside). But there are other references that show the theological development of the idea of Covenant. 

The Greek and Latin Fathers

The shift of the language of theology from Greek to Latin gave Christendom some of her greatest challenges.  It changed the meaning of justification from a declaration about someone in Greek (dikaiw) to man being made righteous in Latin (justia facare).  Touching sanctification, the term in Greek had an ongoing character, in Latin a once-for-all reality.  The shift was devastating in its effect on orthodoxy. 

Federal Headship

Yet, for our interests, this is where the Latin terms of FAEDUS and FEDERALIS, meaning covenant and head come from.  A Federal Head is one who stands as a representative to speak and act for others.  The concept is important for the development of soteriology from the perspective of historical theology.  When Henry VIII declared himself to be the Head of the Church in England and Ireland he meant that he was now the representative civil head who would speak for the institution of Christ’s Church in his realm.  He did it as the sovereign of the land.  Many doctors were once called the chief of this discipline or that department.  It became politically incorrect. So, now they are Department Heads.  They represent their department to all who are above them.  They speak for those who are under them and bear responsibility for whatever happens in their departments.  This is the same notion of headship that we find in its theological usage.

A Specific Latin Illustration

One Latin theologian who used the idea of covenant specifically as well as compact and contract about 200 times in the context of representation was Leo the Great (390-461) a contemporary of the cherished Augustine.  We must be aware that the use of the word covenant in theological reflection did not arise in a vacuum.  It did not appear first in the Reformation. It has a long and storied past just like the notion of the Trinity or the hypostatic union. In my talk this morning, I want to lay some of that out for your edification, I hope.

Some Illustration:

Let me illustrate some of the early usage of this idea from the Early Church Fathers.

The Epistle of Barnabas: This work is to be distinguished from the notorious Gospel of Barnabas that was written by an unnamed Italian around the 14th Century to argue for toleration of and salvation for all by a likely apostate Christian become muslim.  This work is very different. It was known to Clement of Alexandria.  He cites it seven times in his writings. Origen cites it three times and by Jerome at least once.  Scholars are certain that it was not penned by Barnabas of the New Testament.  It is dated around 110-120 AD.  A nice early date close to the Apostolic Age.

Some of the Chapter headings are:

Chapter V. — The New Covenant, Founded on the Sufferings of Christ, Tends to Our Salvation, But to the Jews’ Destruction.

Chapter XIII. — Christians, and Not Jews, the Heirs of the Covenant.

Chapter XXV. — Both Covenants Were Prefigured in Abraham, and in the Labor of Tamar; There Was, However, But One and the Same God to Each Covenant.

The work is really the foundation of the use of Covenant in theologizing outside of the Bible’s own use of these categories.  Usually, in the Church Fathers we find just mention of the New Covenant, the Old Covenant, or the Ark of the Covenant in the writings of the Early Fathers.  However, in this Epistle, we find Covenant used as a concept by itself.  Covenant is not always found with a modifier.  There is a generic theological use of the idea of “covenant”. Chapter X111 is an anti-Jewish presentation showing that it was truly Christians who had the right to claim Abraham as their father. This was expressed in the language of covenant.  A word of caution--this does not mean the writer of the Epistle held to a full-blown Covenant Theology as we would use the term.  It is merely the foundation of extra-biblical theological reflection using the category of “covenant.” It is from early in the Second Century.

Novatian

The Anti-pope and leader of the “puritan party in the middle of the 3rd Century, Novatian, gives us a glimpse at the Early Father’s view of the Godhead in A Treatise of Novatian Concerning the Trinity. But he also shows us that they believed in the organic unity between the Old and New Covenant Scriptures. 

In Chapter XII of his work, we find this title: Argument. — That Christ is God, is Proved by the Authority of the Old Testament Scriptures. In Chapter XIII we read, Argument. — That the Same Truth is Proved from the Sacred Writings of the New Covenant.  In many ways, Covenant was viewed as simply a synonym for Testament--the representative writings of an era declaring God’s specific will.

The Unity of the Scriptures would be another important foundation stone used in 1300 years to reconstruct a right understanding of God’s Covenant mercy and revelation.

Gregory Nazianzus

In the third quarter of the 4th Century, Gregory of Nazianzus would use the idea of covenant in a theologically transcendent manner. He wrote in part, “Again he reminds them of the covenant of God, a covenant of life and peace.” His use is not specific to an historical covenant, but he uses a concept, the Covenant of God, in a more exclusive manner.

Naziansum is significant because, as far as my research has been able to uncover, this Gregory was the first to link the idea of covenant to baptism.  He wrote in Oration XL (40), “And this which comes to the aid of our first birth, makes us new instead of old, and like God instead of what we now are; recasting us without fire, and creating us anew without breaking us up, For, to say it all in one word, the virtue of Baptism is to be understood as a covenant with God for a second life and a purer conversation.” The theological plot thickens.  But, I hope you see how these ideas and their uses evolve as men interact with others and the Scriptures.  I find it fascinating. I love this stuff.

The Covenant of God

In less than 50 more years we find more maturation in the use of Covenantal language beyond specific historical covenants.  It shows the theological development of a theological construction known as the Covenant of God, which eventually becomes to be understood as a gracious Covenant or in the language we use, the Covenant of Grace. There is theological development from the Ancients to our day, just as there is in the doctrine of the Trinity, Christology, Pneumalology, etc.  The Scriptures get applied to the controversies of each age from attacks.  Some come from within the professing Church, some from without.

 See if you can identify the author of this next quotation:

“When it is said, “The male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people, because he hath broken my covenant,”  some may be troubled how that ought to be understood, since it can be no fault of the infant whose life it is said must perish; nor has the covenant of God been broken by him, but by his parents, who have not taken care to circumcise him. But even the infants, not personally in their own life, but according to the common origin of the human race, have all broken God’s covenant in that one in whom all have sinned. Now there are many things called God’s covenants besides those two great ones, the old and the new, which any one who pleases may read and know. For the first covenant, which was made with the first man, is just this: “In the day ye eat thereof, ye shall surely die.” Whence it is written in the book called Ecclesiasticus, “All flesh waxeth old as doth a garment. For the covenant from the beginning is, Thou shall die the death.” Now, as the law was more plainly given afterward, and the apostle says, “Where no law is, there is no prevarication,”  on what supposition is what is said in the psalm true, “I accounted all the sinners of the earth prevaricators,”  except that all who are held liable for any sin are accused of dealing deceitfully (prevaricating) with some law? If on this account, then, even the infants are, according to the true belief, born in sin, not actual but original, so that we confess they have need of grace for the remission of sins, certainly it must be acknowledged that in the same sense in which they are sinners they are also prevaricators of that law which was given in Paradise....”

That is from Augustine’s De Civitas Dei, otherwise known as the City of God, Chapter 27. 

It is about man’s need of God’s grace in the context of breaking the covenant and being covenant-breakers by nature.  He used Covenant as a concept in two important ways.  As a general idea without specific modifier, God’s Covenant, even when he was referring to the Specific Abrahamic Covenant and he wrote, “Now there are many things called God’s covenants besides those two great ones, the old and the new” explicitly pointing us to more covenantal administrations beyond the Old and the New.  Therefore, there is strong historical evidence for the propriety of using the covenants and covenantal language to summarize and explain theological ideas, concepts, and truths.  It is not “new” with the Reformation. 

In Augustine’s Anti-Pelagian writings we find another example of his thinking on a Covenant that transcends man’s sin and God’s grace.  In Chapter 24 — What Covenant of God the New-Born Babe Breaks. What Was the Value of Circumcision.“...Let him tell us, if he can, how that child broke God’s covenant, — an innocent babe, so far as he was personally concerned, of eight days’ age; and yet there is by no means any falsehood uttered here by God or Holy Scripture. The fact is, the covenant of God which he then broke was not this which commanded circumcision, but that which forbade the tree; when “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for in him all have sinned.”

The Covenant of God was in force in, at least, Eden and Israel. Very different circumstances, places and times.  Augustine believed in a timeless objective idea called the Covenant of God.  This is important.

It should not surprise us that some have said the Reformation was Augustine’s doctrine of the Church fighting against his doctrine of Grace.  The main theologian upon whom Calvin and Luther relied was Augustine.  Augustine is a man who the reformation sought to redeem and refute. 

In Chapter 41 and 49, of the same work, I think he agrees with our brother Fred Malone on his exegesis of Hebrews 8 and Jeremiah 31...as well as Jerome in his AGAINST JOVINIANUS Chapter 20, and ....  But that’s another study.....

Leo

A contemporary of Augustine, Leo the Great, or Leo I, also used the same sort of concept gleaned from this understanding of covenant and covenants. We have mentioned him already in the introduction.  He becomes important now.

Gregory

Gregory I or Gregory the Great become Pope in 590.  Building on Augustine’s doctrine of the Church and Leo’s theology of the Church as God’s Sacramental Community through which salvation must and can only come to man and his understanding that God intended the Church to rule and reign over all, Gregory was able to construct the system of Roman Catholicism that was so powerful and overwhelming during the Medieval Era.  The historians call the marriage of administration and theology of the sacraments the “Papal-Sacral” Order.  The Pope was the “VICAR” of Christ to rule upon the earth.  The Church rules the masses by controlling access to the sacraments--including national interdicts where entire countries were barred from the sacraments due to the “sins” of their earthly sovereigns. The Clergy was considered the First and highest estate in the emerging feudal system.  The Pope was Head of the Church and represented God to man as well as man represented before God.  He had become a mediator and head of those people he claimed and sometimes, even of others. 

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages are sometimes called the Dark Ages because of the state of learning, the depths to which culture in Christendom had fallen and the Crusades--a materialistic attempt on the part of some “Christians” to wrestle the Holy Land away from the “Pagans”.  The clergy were ignorant in general terms and the clerics were busy building their own little kingdoms.  The Papal-Sacral Order was efficient, but unable to bring the life needed to preserve and advance culture. There were pockets of believers who seemed to have an idea of what God expected, but we do not know a lot about them.

Renaissance

The Renaissance brought about a rebirth of learning. This rebirth of learning was fueled in part by the manuscripts that were brought back to the Universities in Europe.  As the Scholars dug into ancient writings, they recovered many of the foundations of European civilization.  The Arabs had preserved them in their great libraries.  The Christian scholars read manuscripts of the Scriptures in Greek and Arabic to which they compared the previous manuscripts they had used for centuries.  The scholars came in contact with the Church Fathers to see what the Apostolic Church and the early Church believed.  There was a reawakening that shook the very foundations of the Medieval world.  The world was abuzz with many questioning the status quo--including Erasmus, the Humanist and Luther, the monk. 

The Credibility of the Church was severely damaged in the Renaissance.  Challenges were made to the traditions and the notion of fides implicitum. The Renaissance fueled what became the Reformation.  The Reformation questioned everything in faith and practice.  New bases of articles of faith were being sought and debated.  One of the first was to tear down the notion of the Pope as the Head of the Church in order to replace Christ to his rightful place.  Reformed theologians looked at these new categories and saw only two heads or representatives of two groups of people.  Adam, the federal head of all men without Christ in whom all will die unless rescued by the work done by the other great federal head, the Lord Jesus Christ. This basic idea of headship gave rise to what we call federalism or Federal Theology.  In a technical sense, Federalism is the forerunner of Covenant Theology. Though the two are intimately related historically and theologically.  Over against the Catholic notion of the Pope as the HEAD or federal representative of the Church and therefore Christ’s earthly magisterial representative, Reformed Theologians developed vigorously this restored headship of Christ.  Besides sola scriptura and sola fide, it is the doctrine to affect the Church with the greatest force.  The Lord Jesus Christ was once again understood to be King over his glorious Kingdom. 

A word about sola scriptura:

Martin Luther did not start his career as a reformed by nailing his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenburg. That is the theatrical beginning of the Reformation.  These 95 Theses were not Martin’s first concern.  In the Spring, probably March of 1517, he presented 99 Theses to the Faculty at Wittenburg for theological debate. The 95 touched on penance, repentance, indulgences and how a man can be right with God, but the earlier 99 touched on authority, tradition, scholasticism as it was presently used with human authorities and how a man can know what God has willed.  Scriptural authority over man was of greater concern for Luther as he worked his way through the maze of his own theological wanderings. I would rather we date the start of the Reformation from the Spring of 1517.

Medieval Scholasticism vested authority in ancient authors both biblical and otherwise on the same level. It was these authorities who had explained the Scriptures for the Church and to these authors that the Church looked authoritatively. This is what “tradition” was all about in Catholicism. In recovering the “Fathers” of the Church, humanist scholars started to write about the contradictory nature of theology as taught in the traditional way.  For a few centuries, Thomas had ruled the day in the Universities as supplemented with the sentences of Peter Lombard and others.  In the Renaissance, Augustine was rediscovered. This brought the tradition of Platonism as interpreted by Augustine in conflict with the unreconstructed Aristotellianism used by Thomas Aquinas.  This theological and philosophical impasse was extremely detrimental for the Catholicism being taught in the universities.  Religion was brought low because it was demonstrated to not be a compelling force. In the Universities and eventually in the Churches, man was no longer measured by God in all things.  Many scholars turned to a resurgence of Humanism man being the measure of all things. You see, the ancient philosopher’s writings had also been brought back to Europe and the universities during the Crusades.  The rediscovery of learning treated the sacred and profane with the same weight. The time was right to sort through the contradictory teachings of the Church and to debunk ungodly elements in philosophy in order to find a new way. This new way for the Reformers, was a recovering of the old, expressed in new ways. 

Back to the Covenant:

Sola Scriptura allowed the theologians and exegetes go back to examine the biblical foundations for theological ideas.  The Reformed, started to question everything, especially those items that impinged on the Crown rights of King Jesus and his rule over his people. 

Bullinger (1504-75), one of the formulators of the First Helvitic Confession, is usually credited with formulating a theology using the federal headship of Christ as the organizing principle as his summary of theology.  Formally, the system is called Federalism.  The idea of a God who sovereignly calls men into fellowship with himself became the analytical starting point for Reformed Theology.  The theologians had recovered the Gospel and now set out to question everything in their beliefs and practices through the use of sola scriptura with the Scriptures as the standard or canon, rather than tradition, schoolmen, or the word of a particular church.  The Scriptures were to be the measure.  The covenanting nature of God would be the starting point.

Ursinus (1543-85), the primary author of the Heidelberg Catechism does not use the idea of Covenant of Grace when he introduces his readers to these things.  He uses the Augustinian name, The Covenant of God.  If you have the P&R reprint edition of the 1852 Second American edition, the discussion begins on page 97. It is a wonderful statement making a transition between the work of the Mediator and the need of the Gospel.  It is good devotional reading and edifying to the soul.  It is clear that Ursinus viewed the Covenant of God as having been made with the elect alone--just like our Confession of Faith.  It is not until Ursinus discusses Infant Baptism in Question 74 (P. 365) that the Covenant of God is opened up to Infants with the presumption, not of their regeneration, but with the presumption of their election.  When Brother Fred Malone’s work on baptism comes out, read the section that explains the paedobaptist dilemma at this point.  It is too much to go into in this talk.

Francis Turretin (1623-87) is best known for the three-volume compendium of Reformed Theology known to us as the Institutes of Elenctic Theology.  He was an Orthodox or Reformed Scholastic who used the categories and methods of the Schoolmen to clear Reformed Covenantal doctrine from the errors of Rome, Socinians Amyraldians and emergent Arminians.  It is a work well worth the purchase and read.  Above all other theologies, it will make you a thinker--even in ways Owen won’t. 

Turretin is two theological generations removed from Bullinger and Ursinus.  In that time, Covenant theology/Federalism had strengthened its own position through thorough examination of it by its leading theologians and enemies. Turretin  has a wonderful way in which he uses the federal headship of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Covenant and Covenants to summarize the important points of the system.  Listen to what he says about the Covenant of Grace, the Church and the Elect:

            Second, from the nature of the covenant of grace which [the Lord Jesus          Christ] made with      the Church. Since it is eternal and will never be abrogated   according to the sacred oracles...it is necessary that the church, which is the         other covenanted party, should perpetually continue, that by receiving the             benefits of the covenant, she may also perform her duty toward God, to           which she is bound by the covenant.  And on this account the more because     the conservation of the world depends on the conservation of the church, since for no other reason does he sustain the world than to collect from it the             number of the elect, of whom the body of the church is composed (Institutes,   V. III, pp. 42f).

This is consistent with our Confession of faith as outlined in the circular letter. This is wonderful, doxological theology.  The Covenant of Grace is not so much about us as it is about the eternal purposes of God located in time and space.  It is about God’s love for himself.  A complete self-satisfied love whereby the Father gives an eternal love gift of the elect to his Son after sending him to accomplish their salvation.  The world exists, you and I exist and were converted that the Father might give this gift to his Son.  Nothing will make this world come to an end until all who are to be brought into the Church of the elect are brought to faith by the power and work of God’s Spirit. That we are a part of this eternal act of love should humble us and make us to cry out that we are unworthy sinners saved by God’s matchless covenanting grace.  I wish we could go into greater detail.

We also have Hermann Witsius (1636-78).  Witsius used the Covenant and the Covenants as the motif for his major theological work.  The Economy of the Covenants between God and Man is as the title continues, Comprehending a Complete Body of Divinity.  It is a marvelous piece of Christian Literature and theological art and is the most comprehensive seventeenth-century attempt at a systematic theology using the Covenants as the organizing principle and means of summary.  It takes the Divine Covenants as the starting point for a fully analytical theology.  In general, his view of the Covenant of Grace harmonizes well with our Confession. In his Book III, Chap. I (Vol 1, p. 281) he begins a discussion on Of the Covenant of God with the Elect. Using the term from Ursinus and Augustine, he sets out the reasons why this transcendental covenant must be understood as being between a Sovereign God and the elect he calls by grace.  It is an amazing chapter.  I only wish he had mentioned the Baptist Confession published in London on the year 1677.  It is the only thing missing.

Our understanding of the covenant of grace, may be different than the Westminster divines’s theological musings, but it is not however, inconsistent with other contemporary writers and the Federalism and Covenant Theology of the first generation of Reformed thinkers.  It is interesting that we,as Baptists in the Reformed tradition, have not deviated from what was rediscovered in the Reformation as men sought to recover the rightful place of the Lord Jesus as federal head over his church.  Our Particular Baptist forebears worked out the details with greater consistency to all of theology and practice. They applied sola Scriptura to the task of theology questioning everything to not only find a new basis for old truths, but a right foundation for all that was believed and practiced.   Yet, the use of “Covenant” as a transcendental idea remains a part of theological reflection from very early on in the history of theological development.  It is as old as the use of “Trinity” as a theological concept used to explain the nature and work of God. We should not fear what others might say.  It is a term that captured the essence of God’s saving work among men.  He brings men to himself, saves them from their sin and rebellion by his own dear son, applies it by his blest Spirit that the recipients of grace might become his people having their hearts subdued by divine grace.  This is the purpose of God found in the term the Covenant of God or the Covenant of Grace.  It is not a new thing.  It is as old as the decree of God and the Covenant of Redemption brought to man in the covenant of grace.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, to shed his covenanting grace on me. I once was lost, but now am found, of covenant mercy I sing.  Amen.