Covenant and Interpretation
As new believers, we all have ideas that need to be replaced with the norms of the Bible. This is true about our use of words, but also about larger categories of thought. The need for constant renovation in our thinking is something that the Scriptures themselves tell us to expect. Perhaps the classic passage is Romans 12:2 where Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Now if this is true about the relationship between our worldview and the practical matters of life, we should not be surprised that it will also be true about how we approach the Bible to begin with. The study of how readers approach literature in a general sense is called hermeneutics, whereas how we interpret specific texts is called exegesis. Our overall theology ought to determine both, just as the truth we derive from that reading process will continue to inform our theology.
Covenants throughout the Bible
Needless to say, there are hermeneutical approaches that get nearer to being faithful to the Scriptures as a whole than others. We may say that we want a Trinitarian approach or a Christological approach, or any number of other ways to privilege God’s glory, or His method of salvation—that these are the basic themes of Scripture and so these determine how we read all else. There is an important truth in that. However, God also uses means to achieve His greatest ends. One of the great means that runs from cover to cover in Scripture is the idea of covenants.
On the most basic level, a covenant is an agreement between two or more persons. When it comes to the biblical covenants, O. Palmer Robertson has said that a covenant is “a bond in blood sovereignly administered” by God.1 Of course that only raises the question for many: How would we know that we are looking at a covenant in Scripture verses a non-covenant? Just as theology as a whole is done at the concept level, not the mere word level, so it is with identifying biblical covenants. What matters is not the exact words that are used, but whether the essential elements of a covenant are present.
Several such elements are undisputed: 1. two or more parties, 2. conditions or obligations, 3. blessings and curses, 4. a representation principle, 5. signs that point to those blessings.
What then would it mean for such a relationship to feature as a “big picture” interpretive grid for how we understand the Scriptures?
Covenant theology sees the whole Bible as a unity. There are two main covenants in the Bible (works and grace) and several “administrations” of that covenant of grace. As to those administrations of the covenant of grace, there are the Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New Covenant; and then there are others that are foundational to grace (Redemption), or even the Noahic, which is often treated as dealing with both the creation at large—namely, all human beings and not merely those who will be saved by God’s grace in Christ—and which is made for the purposes of preserving the world in this age.
As to proof texts, Genesis 12, 15, and 17 would ground the Abrahamic, Exodus 19-24 the Mosaic, 2 Samuel 7 the Davidic, and Jeremiah 31:31-34 the New. Genesis 8-9 the Noahic, while the Covenant of Redemption is a bit more controversial. Several of the passages that are cited must require some theologizing, as there is no one verse that answers the question for us in an encyclopedic fashion.
Think of these administrations as phases of development. No doubt, that can introduce some complexity at first. However, this outlook sees one ultimate program of God and one substance of salvation in Christ. Whether someone is in the Old Testament or in the New Testament, God is still God, and sinners are still related favorably to Him only by grace through the means of a perfect Mediator. This means one way of salvation, one plan of God, and one people of God from Genesis to Revelation. This view does not deny the specific promises to Abraham but sees the substance of them fulfilled in Christ and for the whole church: Jews and Gentiles.
The Challenge of Dispensationalism
A new way to interpret the Bible emerged in the nineteenth century called dispensationalism. This approach divided the Bible into seven basic “dispensations,” or periods of God dealing differently with man, based on how man performed in the previous era. These are (1) innocence, (2) conscience, (3) human government, (4) promise, (5) law, (6) grace, (7) the kingdom age.
At its heart, dispensationalism seeks to take God’s promises to Abraham “literally,” by which it means materially and exclusively, with respect to offspring, nation, land, and other blessings all applying to the ethnic people. As such, it cannot accept that those promises are fundamentally fulfilled in Christ for the whole church, as an inheritance of all things. One practical consequence of dispensationalism is a modern sense of bewilderment over how to read or apply the Old Testament to a non-Jewish audience. Where the New Testament is constantly pointing back to the Old for the foundations of our faith (Gal. 3:6-9), the grounding of various laws, or examples and warnings to us (1 Cor. 10:1-15), the dispensational system does not allow any of this.
Many especially in the generation born after 2000 may think themselves quite exempt from this, as it has waned in its influence. Others who are older may tend to think of theological systems as a matter for seminarians, or as something that would show up in the name to one’s church or its denomination affiliation. In many cases, this is not so. Dispensationalism was most definitely a contrary case in point.
Coinciding with the Modernist Controversy in the first few decades of the twentieth century, dispensationalism had already reached majority status among fundamentalists. This resulted from two phenomena: a very effective series of Bible Conferences and the new popular study Bible edited by C. I. Scofield, both from the dispensationalist perspective. By 1924 the movement would open its own institution, Dallas Theological Seminary, but it was also the reigning system at Moody, Fuller, Trinity, and elsewhere. Several of its theologians would be read widely—e.g., Lewis Sperry Chafer, John F. Walvoord, Charles C. Ryrie, and J. Dwight Pentecost. Unless we are talking about self-consciously confessional Presbyterian bodies, the odds are that one’s church tradition was influenced by dispensationalism to the fullest extent. It simply was the only interpretive grid for understanding the Bible for a good seventy years within broader Evangelicalism.
The Unity of the Covenant of Grace
If we could boil down a covenantal hermeneutic down to one idea it would be the unity of the covenant of grace. There are other important ways that covenant theology makes sense of the rest of Scripture; but this idea is of first importance. The covenant of grace is God’s promise of eternal life to a people in Christ, first announced to Abraham, fulfilled in Christ, and which forms the church. Any serious student of the Bible can see Paul linking believers in Christ to Abraham in terms of being sons of faith and so forth. But questions naturally begin to emerge from there. For example, “Isn’t the Abrahamic included under the old covenant? It is in the very first book of the Bible, after all.” No, and in fact that is actually backwards (according to Paul’s own reasoning in Galatians 3:15-22).
Rather, the old is included after the seed of Abraham. Essentially the Abrahamic covenant is the covenant of grace in its historical beginnings. Since Abraham was father of physical Israel and not merely spiritual, his line is also the receiving party to the Mosaic covenant as well. But that too is an administration of the covenant of grace (namely, in its old covenant form).
Jeremiah 31:31-34 is one place that makes an important distinction where the Abrahamic transcends the old. Notice in that passage that the Lord contrasts the New Covenant not with the one made through Abraham, but with the one made through Moses (v. 32). Someone may ask in response, “How then do we define the Old Covenant?” The Old is basically the Mosaic and in particular its ceremonial and national character beginning at Sinai.
Ultimately one must wrestle more deeply with the implications of Paul calling the promises to Abraham “the gospel” (Gal. 3:8), with all believers, even among the Gentiles, being called his offspring (Rom. 4:13, 16; Gal. 3:7, 29), and grafted in to the same entity with believing Jews (Eph. 2:12; Gal. 3:9, 14, 27-29). This is just one more application that we interpret Scripture in light of Scripture. If Scripture ever says about other parts of Scripture, essentially, “This is the way to understand that other portion of Scripture,” then our opinions, however long-standing and popular, must give way to God’s own interpretation.
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1. O. Palmer Robertson,The Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1980), 4.
