I need to rewrite a chapter in our officer training curriculum about Covenant Theology. That project has stalled (i.e., I’ve procrastinated), so I’m using this blog to force myself to write a little bit about it. The final version will likely be tweaked, but I’m going to start with a short entry (in academic terms, a precis) and maybe add more in the future. I’m not using formal footnotes, but this borrows heavily from Ligon Duncan’s class syllabus, Louis Berkhof[1], and O. Palmer Robertson.
Covenant Theology: Definition, description, distinctives, and development.
Definition:
Covenant theology is the Gospel set in the context of God’s eternal plan of communion with his people and its historical outworking in the covenants of works and grace (including the various progressive stages of the covenant of grace). Covenant theology explains the meaning of the death of Christ in light of the fullness of the biblical teaching on the divine covenants, undergirds our understanding of the nature and use of the sacraments, and provides the fullest possible explanation of the grounds of our assurance.
Description:
Covenant Theology is both Systematic and Biblical theology. It is first Biblical theology and then Systematic, teaching us how it relates to all other categories of theology. (Biblical theology is a technical term. It’s not distinguishing Biblical from unbiblical theology. It’s talking about the discipline that traces Biblical themes through the Biblical narrative of Creation-Fall-Redemption-Recreation. In short, the Bible says more about covenants than simply what is said in Genesis 15; more is revealed in Scripture over time.)
Distinctives:
Covenant theology is the Bible’s way of explaining and deepening four things:
1. The atonement – In the gospels, covenant terminology is primarily found when Jesus teaches his disciples the significance of his death on the eve of his death.
2. Assurance – In Hebrews 6:9ff, the author[2] is grounding their assurance of salvation in the oath God swore. Oath is covenant language.
3. The sacraments – Sacraments are signs and seals of covenant promises; covenant theology provides the framework for interpreting them. They are signs of a promise, not signs of a command. That’s why foot-washing isn’t a sacrament. Neither is marriage, which is a covenant, not a sign or seal of a covenant.
4. The continuity of Redemptive History – In the earliest days, this is how covenant theology was employed. It provides a hermeneutic (interpretive grid) to explain the Bible and God’s unified plan of salvation.
In summary, covenant theology recognizes that the Bible itself structures the progress of redemptive history through the succession of covenants. “Ligon, Covenant Theology is just the gospel,” Mark Dever once said.[3]
Development (History):
Early Fathers: Present But Undeveloped
The early fathers used the doctrine of the covenant in five ways:
1. To stress the moral obligations of Christianity.
2. To show God’s grace in including the Gentiles in the Abrahamic blessings.
3. To deny that Israelites received the promises simply because they were physical descendants of Abraham.
4. To demonstrate the unity of the divine economy of salvation. They did not see the Old Testament as shadowy stuff with no application for Christians; they interpreted it as Christian (not Jewish) scripture.
5. To explain the discontinuity between the old and new covenants in Scripture.
Medieval - The farther away from the 1st century that the church fathers got, the more they lost their Hebrew and Greek, the more they lost the idea of the covenant. Ockham and Biel were teaching that God rewards sinners with a kind of merit when they do their best (a semi-pelagian idea). It was against this very teaching that Martin Luther rebelled in the Protestant Reformation.
Reformation - Beginning with the basic distinction between Law (guilt) and Gospel (grace) Luther and others also used the covenant to include a more prominent place for sanctification or gratitude. These three (guilt, grace, and gratitude) form the basis for many Reformed catechisms, particularly the Heidelberg Catechism.
Since Calvin, Reformed theologians have also spoken of God’s graciousness in entering into covenant relations with Adam. This language has often been misunderstood. In Westminster Confession of Faith terms, God the Creator graciously condescends to man the creature, yet God’s law is still binding for all.
Again, this borrows heavily from Ligon Duncan and others. This is likely part 1 of at least 4 sections needed to cover this topic, and even this section might need a revision soon.
-Pastor Matt, 9-26-25
[1] A story that may amuse no one except me: Louis Berkhof is the author of a standard Systematic Theology often used in seminaries. When a classmate and I leaned heavily on Berkhof’s outline for one of our Covenant Theology assignments, the teaching assistant who did most of the grading (because Dr. Duncan was moonlighting as a megachurch pastor at the time) gave us both a B. My classmate protested: “Berkhof got a B??!!” It wasn’t quite like giving John Calvin a B, but it felt similar, and the quote has always stuck with me and amused me.
[2] Theories abound about the author of Hebrews, but I’m assuming we simply don’t know who wrote it.
[3] Ligon Duncan is a Presbyterian PCA minister; his old friend Mark Dever is a Reformed Baptist minister. Dr. Duncan used to tell this anecdote in class, and I did my best to recreate it here.