What Is Covenant Theology?
Covenant Theology is a product of the Reformed world. Historically speaking, it’s fairly recent. Zwingli got the ball rolling on this thought, but one of its initial popularizers was Heinrich Bullinger. Dispensationalists get a lot of heat from people for being something that supposedly started in the 19th century, but Covenant Theology isn’t much older. If we’re going to measure the truthfulness of biblical understanding by antiquity, then throw out your Covenant Theology. If you’re going to throw out Dispensationalism, you may as well throw out Covenant Theology, because on a historical scale, it’s only a little bit older. Covenant Theology will be an older brother in the family, and Dispensationalism a younger brother.
Covenant Theology posits that all of God’s dealings with humanity since the fall happen in an overarching covenant of grace. Covenant theologians like to debate whether or not there was a covenant of works made with Adam. Most of them think that there was, at least to my analysis, but there are some who insist that there wasn’t. Nevertheless, they divide all of human history into a covenant of works and a covenant of grace. By the way, that almost sounds like dispensations, doesn’t it? Here’s the problem. The Bible nowhere speaks in any specific way of a covenant of grace. I’ve got a video on this topic, called The Problem with the Covenant of Grace.
To summarize it, Covenant Theology bases this whole system of theology on the idea of a covenant of grace, but the Bible is silent as concerns any covenant of grace. I hear people argue, “Well, the word Trinity is not in the Bible, but we believe in the Trinity. So just because the Bible doesn’t talk about a covenant of grace doesn’t mean there is one.” Listen, dear friend, the Bible talks about covenant all the time in over 330 mentions of the word covenant, yet it never refers to a covenant of grace. The Bible is very eloquent when it comes to covenant. It talks about it all the time, but there’s no mention of this supposed covenant of grace. It’s a figment of the imagination of systematic theologians.
I’ve heard people say, “Well, they don’t really mean a covenant of grace. They mean an overall gracious plan of God.” Okay, now you have my attention, if you’re talking about an overall plan of God. I believe God has an overall plan of the ages that He is working throughout all time, in biblical history and ever since. But that’s entirely different than saying that there is a covenant of grace, let alone a covenant of grace that babies should be baptized into. That’s a whole other issue, but it is what got me interested in researching this topic.
I don’t buy the premise of Covenant Theology. One of the major premises of Covenant Theology is that there is that the covenant of grace is vitally important, overarching, touching everything, and that it sums up God’s plan – but somehow, the Bible never specifically mentions it. The Bible does mention a covenant God made with humanity in the days of Noah. It mentions a covenant He made with Abraham. It mentions a covenant He made with Israel. It mentions a covenant that he made with David. It mentions a glorious New Covenant. I’m into that kind of Covenant Theology. I think the covenants of God as they’re revealed in the Bible are extremely important for understanding the Bible and God’s plan of the ages. But I’ve studied the Bible many times front to back, and there is not a covenant of grace, at least not in the way that it’s developed by covenant theologians.
The rules for salvation have always been the same: God’s righteous ones are made righteous by faith. This was first stated and explicitly worked out with Abraham and is true all the way to the present time. The overarching plan of God does make a distinction between Israel and the Church. They are not the same entities.