The Essentials of Covenant Theology

A Wonderful Summary from John Owen

1. It is agreed that the way of reconciliation with God, of justification and salvation, was always one and the same; and that from the giving of the first promise none was ever justified or saved but by the new covenant, and Jesus Christ, the mediator of it. The foolish imagination before mentioned, that men were saved before the giving of the law by following the guidance of the light of nature, and after the giving of the law by obedience to the directions of it, is rejected by all that are sober, as destructive of the Old Testament and the New.

2. That the writings of the Old Testament, namely, the Law, Psalms, and Prophets, do contain and declare the doctrine of justification and salvation by Christ. The church of old believed this, in that the doctrine mentioned is frequently confirmed in the New Testament by testimonies taken out of the Old.

3. That by the covenant of Sinai, as properly so called, separated from its figurative relation to the covenant of grace, none was ever eternally saved.

4. That the use of all the institutions in accordance with which the old covenant was administered, was to represent and direct to Jesus Christ, and his mediation.[1]

If you’ve ever wondered what covenant theology is all about, try J.I. Packer’s Introduction: On Covenant Theology

What is covenant theology? The straightforward, if provocative answer to that question is that it is what is nowadays called a hermeneutic -- that is, a way of reading the whole Bible that is itself part of the overall interpretation of the Bible that it undergirds. A successful hermeneutic is a consistent interpretative procedure yielding a consistent understanding of Scripture in turn confirms the propriety of the procedure itself. Covenant theology is a case in point. It is a hermeneutic that forces itself upon every thoughtful Bible-reader who gets to the place, first, of reading, hearing, and digesting Holy Scripture as didactic instruction given through human agents by God himself, in person; second, of recognizing that what the God who speaks the Scriptures tells us about in their pages is his own sustained sovereign action in creation, providence, and grace; third, of discerning that in our salvation by grace God stands revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, executing in tripersonal unity a single cooperative enterprise of raising sinners from the gutter of spiritual destitution to share Christ's glory for ever; and, fourth, of seeing that God-centered thought and life, springing responsively from a God-wrought change of heart that expresses itself spontaneously in grateful praise, is the essence of true knowledge of God. Once Christians have got this far, the covenant theology of the Scriptures is something that they can hardly miss.

If you’d prefer lighter reading, then Steven Baugh’s article on Modern Reformation is good. He also describes Covenant Theology as an “organizing principle”, a framework or hermeneutic as Packer does.   His discussion of the two-covenant schema and its application to Romans 5 is well worth the read.

There are many shorter articles on-line, along with the many articles attempting to define the differences between Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism.  I’ll leave you to follow the debate for yourself.  But I thought John Owen’s summary was particularly beautiful and unencumbered by the modern controversy surrounding the hermeneutic. H.T. to Alpha and Omega Ministries for the plant.

References

1. Nehemiah Coxe & John Owen, Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ (Palmdale: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2005), 140.  A reprint of A Discourse of the Covenants that God Made with Men before the Law, 1681