Category: Theology

A Reading List On Covenant Theology

A friend wrote asking for a list of books I’ve read touching Covenant theology. He thought given the current controversy on identifying the Israel of God (who Israel has become in NT theology) that it would be a profitable list. All of these books will make clear that OT Israel  was the cocoon that was shuffled off when it became the butterfly that is the Church, and so there are no further promises left to the Israel after the flesh.

So, I offer this list, as I randomly have recalled my reading over the decades;

1.) Cornelius Venema – Christ And Covenant Theology: Essays on Election, Republication

Deals with issues surrounding the rise of covenant theology in relation to R2K theology.

2.) Stephen Myers – God to Us: Covenant Theology in Scripture

Is intended as something of a primer in Reformed covenant theology

3.) O. Palmer Robertson – Christ of the Covenants

Traces Christ through the unfolding of the one covenant of grace.

4.) Charles D.Provan – The Church is Israel Now: The Transfer of Conditional Privilege

Demonstrating, from Scripture that it is Dispensationalists who practice replacement theology by replacing the Church with unbelieving Israel

5.)  David Howeldra – Jesus and Israel: One Covenant or Two?

Argues that the promises to OT Israel are fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

6.) O. T. Allis – Prophecy & The Church

Absolutely destroys Dispensationalism’s teaching that promises remain to physical Israel. Best book I’ve ever read unraveling Dispensationalism’s errant views of covenant theology.

7.) O Palmer Robertson – The Israel of God

Robertson examines the OT prophecies related to land, God’s people, the coming Kingdom and other topics and shows how Christ and his church fulfill those prophecies today.

8.) Francis Roberts – God’s Covenants: The Mystery and Marrow of the Bible

Five volumes. I’ve only made it through Vol. 1. Exhaustive explanation of the covenant of Grace as understood in the classical “Covenant of Works,” “Covenant of Grace” paradigm.

9.) Rowland Ward – God and Adam

A handy volume giving a birds eye view of various explanations of the mechanics of covenant theology. Very helpful.

10.) Geerhardus Vos – Biblical Theology: Old and New Testament

Vos was an absolute genius. I’ve read everything I have been able to find by him. You will not understand Covenant theology until you have read Vos. Unfortunately Vos was Amil so read discerningly on that score.

11.) G. K. Beale – A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New

Beale argues that every major concept of the New Testament is a development of a concept from the Old and is to be understood as a facet of the inauguration of the latter-day new creation and kingdom. The emphasis is on the continuity between OT and NT which only covenant theology can provide. Beale is another genius who has greatly helped me. Again … he is Amill.

12.) Jonathan Gerstner – Wrongly Dividing the Truth

An needed attack on Dispensationalism that presupposes Covenant theology.

13,) Geerhardus Vos, ‘The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology’ in Richard B. Gaffin (ed.), Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: the Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos

14.) J. D. Hall & Joel Webbon – The Hyphenated Heresy: Judeo-Christianity

Though not strictly a book on covenant theology this book does demonstrate repeatedly that the Church is the inheritor of all the promises to Israel and is today the “Israel of God.”  Clearly teaches that OT physical Israel has been replaced (fulfilled) by the Church.

14.) See also the appropriate sections of Systematic Theologies

Robert Letham
Louis Berkhof
Charles H. Hodge
Herman Bavinck
Robert Reymond
Francis Turretin
R. L. Dabney
John Calvin (Institutes 2: 9-11)
Herman Hoeksema

HH offers a decidedly different view of the covenants seeing more continuity between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace than what might be termed “classical Reformed” theology. However, HH makes some interesting points that are worthy of consideration.

These are what I remember reading off the top of my head. If I recall more I will edit and add them at a later date.

Open Theism As The “Solution” To The Arminian Problem?

I grew up Arminian (Wesleyan). I know their theology well as I studied it in Undergrad earning one of my Bachelors in an associated field (Religion-Philosophy). I still have the blue test books from those Theology classes in my file cabinets. In those test books I received top score for my ability to slice and dice Calvinism, along with praise from the Professors.

Along the way, resisting as much as I possibly could, I gave up Arminianism and was born again, again. I became a Christian (sometimes known as Calvinist).

One of the hurdles I could not get over, thus pushing me towards Calvinism was the problem found in all standard Arminianism. Evangelical Arminianism, teaching Hypothetical Universalism (the idea that Christ died for all people without exception) had to likewise hold that all men has libertarian free will. If Christ dies for everybody, but everybody isn’t saved than that factors that divides those who are saved and who are not saved, per Arminianism is the fact that some cooperated with prevenient grace while others did not cooperate with prevenient grace. The reason that some cooperate with prevenient grace (the grace that goes before salvation) while others don’t cooperate is the result of some using their Libertarian free will to choose to be regenerated while others use their Libertarian free will to say no to God’s resistible grace.

The Arminians have this problem though. If man has this kind of Libertarian free will to tell God to “go pound sand,” as the Spirit of God intends to convert them, then Arminians can no longer teach that God is sovereign and so controls all things. Still, Arminians would teach that while God may not be exhaustively sovereign such as their Calvinist foe’s teach God still did foreknow all things that would come to pass even if God didn’t predetermine or predestine the beginning from the end the way the Calvinist insisted.  So, as it pertains to individual salvation, per the Arminian God knows (but does not determine) how each person will use their Libertarian free will in order to either accept or reject the “Gospel Invitation.”

The problem that eventually presented itself to the “smarter than the average bear” Arminian is that they understood that if God foreknows everything that happens or will happen, God thereby renders that thing He foreknows as certain. God in foreknowing all that will happen has in that foreknowing made certain all that will happen. If God foreknew from eternity past that I would mock Arminian theology in 2026, then that mocking had to happen. I would not be free to not mock Arminian theology. This is true even if we, along with the Arminian, reject that God makes everything happen. The relevant point is that God’s foreknowing of an event to occur before it occurs makes it certain that the event will occur even if God is not the causative source of said event happening.  Even if there is some other causality to my mocking Arminian theology, God foreknew that the other causality would lead me to mock Arminian theology and so the mocking of Arminian theology in 2026 by me would by necessity come to pass. Exhaustive divine foreknowledge necessitates determinism, whether or not determinism is the result of divine causality. The nub of the matter is that some Arminians began to understand they were on the horns of a dilemma here. What to do?

Well, there really are only two choices. The Red Pill solution was “become a Calvinist,” and deny Libertarian free will. Forty years ago plus, I took the Red Pill. However, some former Arminians took the Blue Pill and so denied foreknowledge. The Blue Pill allowed the Arminian to become more consistently inconsistent. By taking the Blue Pill the Arminian moved from Arminianism to Open Theism. The Arminians joined the Open Theists (a form of Socinianism) and so rejected the idea of the Arminian doctrine of God’s foreknowledge. For the Open Theist if God was sovereign He was sovereign quite apart from any exhaustive foreknowledge. Of course the idea that God can be sovereign without either Calvinist sovereignty or Arminian foreknowledge is just a surd.  The Arminian by choosing Open Theism became more consistently inconsistent inasmuch as he now has found a way to consistently embrace Libertarian free will. However he has done so at the cost of magnificently gross inconsistency inasmuch as he has embraced a God, who by definition, has been drained of all that makes God, God. As it were the Arminian, when affirming Libertarian free will, was already worshiping a emasculated god. However, in moving to Free Will Theism (Open Theism) he is now worshiping a emasculated man as god said loudly. The Arminian has embraced anthropological consistency at the cost of theological inconsistency.

It seems like, to a certain degree, Open Theism has been beaten back. However, Arminianism remains the major report in terms of numbers as among American Evangelicals. Very few people believe in a muscular doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Most Evangelicals … even most Reformed, in a De facto sense, embrace enough of the shards of Arminianism to bring into doubt their Calvinistic bona fides.

And thus the Church in the West continues to limp along.

Addendum:

Touching Libertarian free will we would note that for every bit of Libertarian free will that you give to man you take that much from the Triune God. Man cannot have Libertarian free will without God not having Libertarian free will.

The Scripture exhaustively teaches that God exhaustively controls all things (Lamentations 3:37-38;  Rom. 8:28, 11:33-36; Eph. 1:11). As that control extends to our free decisions we read in Scripture wherein God controls the free decisions of people. (Joseph’s Brothers – Gen. 45:5-8; Cyrus – Isa. 44:28; Judas – Lk. 22:28, Acts 2:23-24, 4:27-28, 13:27.)

Now, that people do what they want to do while it still being the case that God is in exhaustive control is taught by the doctrine of Compatibilism. Compatibilism teaches that man does what he wants to do and is not coerced in his decision making. Man’s decision are voluntary. Compatibilism further teaches that man’s freedom presuppose his nature. Fallen man is free to choose all kinds of option  but because of his fallen nature, fallen man can never choose not to sin. Compatibilism teaches that whatever it is we voluntarily choose it does not mean we had the freedom to choose otherwise. We were pushed to choose whatever we choose consistent with pre-existing influence, inclination, or disposition. In choosing nobody starts from neutral in choosing what they choose. Considered from the macro understanding though, compatibilism affirms that all wills are in bondage to God’s sovereignty.

 

Quote From RJR’s “The One & The Many,” & Commentary

“Wherever a society has a naturalistic religion, grounded on the concept of continuity, man faces the total power of the state. This is clearly true today, as it was in antiquity. The Scythians “worshipped the elements” and practiced veneration of ancestors, and the royal Scyths “ruled as despots.” The Parthians practiced a religion affirming continuity, and their monarchs had “nearly despotic” power and claimed the title of “Kings of Kings.” The list can be extended at length. Where there is no transcendental law and power in a separate and omnipotent being, then power has a wholly immanent and immediate source in a state, group, or person, and it is beyond appeal. The state becomes the saving power and the source of law; it becomes the priestly agency of its own total power and the manifest power of its divinity. Such a state becomes god walking on the earth, and its every tyranny is identified as liberty, because being and meaning are both identifiable in terms of the state. Since it is held that there is no law beyond the state, meaning is what the state defines, and liberty is what the state provides. In this faith, for man to be free means to be in the state. More than that, for man to be, he must be a member of the state, for being is one and continuous, and salvation is a metaphysical unification of all being.”

The One and the Many
R. J. Rushdoony

1.) It is more accurate to say that where the God of the Bible is not owned and worshipped in a social order the consequence is that the State will absolutized and so worshiped, whether in a de facto or de jure sense. The citizens will become subjects and all will believe that “in the state we live and move and have our being.”

2.) All social orders must have transcendence in order to operate. They can choose either from a transcendent, transcendent (the God of the Bible) or they can create an immanent transcendent. Of course, an immanent transcendent is a contradiction but when a transcendent, transcendent is rejected then something must serve in its place. What happens with an immanent transcendent is that something subjective (usually the State as seen in history) is inflated with a pseudo objective transcendence so as to become that reality against which all other realities find their point of reference in order to find definition.  When this happens the social order, as a whole is in transgression against the first commandment.

3.) Perhaps one of the most glaring examples of this in history occurred during the Soviet Show Trials of the 1930s. In that setting Stalin put on trial Communists who had been with Lenin during the success of revolutionary Marxism. They were the old lions of the revolution; Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and  Radek. These men went into the kangaroo court show trial where their guilt was predetermined. Though innocent, they pled guilty to the charges of treason brought against them. Now, many have offered that the false admission of guilt was due to threats against family members of the accused by Stalin. However, the accused knew that Stalin was no man to keep his word. No, their admission of guilt was because they believed the State was God (the transcendent, transcendent). They had based their whole lives as revolutionaries upon the premise that the State was God. Now, the State (their God) was insisting they were guilty and being true believers they confessed to the guilt that their God said was theirs. If your God says your guilty, you are guilty whether you think you are or not.

4.) In this phrase “because being and meaning are both identifiable in terms of the state,” means that if and when the state becomes a social order’s transcendent, transcendent then the state becomes the arbiter of being and meaning. If you are a chameleon, then whatever color you are placed in as a background becomes the standard by which you know what color to turn to. In the same way when men make the state the transcendent, transcendent they play the chameleon to the state. All being and meaning are determined for the individual in the social order by the state in its metaphorical coloring.

5.) All of this is why Socrates chose to drink the hemlock as opposed to be banished by the state. Death was a better choice then to lose one’s being by being banished from one’s meaning maker.

6.) When this kind of situation obtains then reality becomes increasingly inverted. As Rush notes above, Liberty becomes tyranny and tyranny becomes liberty. We are seeing this in our culture. Reality is being set on its head. Men are women, and women are men. Marriage has no stable meaning and can include all kinds of permutations. Theft by taxation is called “paying your fair share.”

7.) Touching this statement by RJR; “it (the state) becomes the priestly agency of its own total power,” communicates that the tyrannical state playing the transcendent, transcendent not only will claim the authority of “King,” but also will exercise the power of “Priest.” This means that the state will mediate its own “salvation” to those living in the social order. Now, because everything is upside down in tyrannical orders as described this means that what is called “salvation,” will indeed be “destruction.” For example, playing the role of Priest, mediating salvation, the current tyrannical state in the West as said; “in order to be saved we need to import millions of third world people into our lands. This will give us more cheap labor.” However, in the mediation of this salvation, the West is being destroyed. Bureaucrats who work for the state often play this role of priest for the state.

8.) All this proves that a God or god concept is inescapable. All this proves that Atheism is a myth. All men take either the God of the Bible as God or they embrace a false god. There is no such thing as someone or some culture who.which has no god.

9.) When RJR uses this phrase; “salvation is a metaphysical unification of all being,”  Rush is talking about humanist salvations. Humanist salvations require uniformity of all. This is due to the fact that all godheads must have unity. If the state is the god in the social order then all in the social order must be one with the god of the social order. Unification of all being is necessary. This truth explains why Rome persecuted the Christians who would not pinch incense to Caesar. In their refusal to pinch incense to Caesar they were committing treason inasmuch as that refusal was a denial of the metaphysical unification of all being.

Touching The Organic Nature Of Christian Doctrine & The Superiority Of Right Doctrine

“The Christian truth, with the certifying of which we have to do, is essentially only one, compact in itself, vitally interconnected, — as such at the same time organic, — and it is therefore not possible one should possess and retain a portion of the same, while yet not possessing, or rejecting, the other portions. On the contrary, the member or portion of the truth, which it had been thought to be appropriate or maintain alone, would by this isolating cease to be that which it was or is in itself; it would become an empty form or husk, from which the life, the Christian reality, has escaped.”
F. H. R. Frank
19th Century Lutheran Theologian

I challenge anyone to understand and embrace the truth in the quote above while at the same time saying things like, “the differences between credo-baptism and paedo-baptism shouldn’t be a matter to divide over,” or “whether it is the memorial view of Communion, or whether the receptionist view or whether the transubstantiation view we can still all just get along,” or “eschatology doesn’t matter, one can be premil, postmil, amill or preterist and still be co-laborers together.” Understanding the truth in the italicized quote above makes one decidedly particular in his understanding of the Christian faith. Now, that is not to say that there aren’t allowances to be made for other Christian systems (Lutheran, Baptist, Holiness, Pentecostal, Wesleyan etc.) that have errors in them. We should be able to be like B. B. Warfield who said that;

“There is but one kind of theism, religion, evangelicalism; and the several constructions laying claim to these names differ from each other not as correlative species of a broader class, but as more or less perfect, or more or less defective, exemplifications of a single species. Calvinism conceives of itself as simply the more pure theism, religion, evangelicalism, superseding as such the less pure.”

And so the Calvinist owns the less pure expressions of Christianity as Christianity but quite without communicating that all the examples given in the paragraph after the italicized quote (and more) don’t really matter. Those differences do matter and having errant views on these matters stunts the maturity of Christians who hold to those views, and frankly ends up making those who hold to the less pure expressions to be weaker Christians having lesser character. Bad theology hurts people — even people who are beyond doubt united to Christ.

So, the Calvinist will seek, at one and the same time, to correct his errant brother while still calling him “Brother.” The Calvinist will not act as if all of the doctrines of the Christian faith are not organic. The Calvinist will not suggest that some doctrines of the Christian faith are optional and this because the Calvinist understands that the Christian faith is organic and that Calvinism is the most faithful expression of the Christian faith.

Vos On The Implications Of The Image Of God In Man

“The man bears God’s image means much more than that he is a spirit and possesses understanding, will, etc. It means above all that he is disposed for communion with God, that all the capacities of his soul can act in a way that corresponds to their destiny only if they rest in God. This is the nature of man. That is to say, there is no sphere of life that lies outside their relationship with God and in which religion would not be the ruling principle. According to the Roman Catholic conception, there is a natural man who functions in the world, and that natural man adopts a religion that takes place beyond his nature. According to our conception, our entire nature should not be free from God at any point; the nature of man must be worship from beginning to end. According to the deeper Protestant conception, the image does not exist only in correspondence with God but in being disposed toward God. God’s nature is, as it were, the stamp; our nature is the impression made by this stamp. Both fit together.

Geerhardus Vos
Reformed Dogmatics Vol. II – pg. 13-14

1.) This quote proves that Vos would have abominated R2K with its teaching that there are spheres of life that lie outside the Christian’s relationship with God and in which the Christian religion is not to be the ruling principle.

2.) This quote also attacks the Thomistic Roman Catholic paradigm of Natural law. When Vos offers;

According to the Roman Catholic conception, there is a natural man who functions in the world, and that natural man adopts a religion that takes place beyond his nature. According to our conception, our entire nature should not be free from God at any point; the nature of man must be worship from beginning to end. According to the deeper Protestant conception, the image does not exist only in correspondence with God but in being disposed toward God.

Vos is telling us that one can’t excise the natural man in order to place him in a natural law realm that isn’t conditioned by religion. Religion does not take place beyond man’s nature. Thomists (Roman Catholic and “Reformed”) are the ones who will advocate that the image of God in man only exists in correspondence with God. The Reformed always taught this was not the case but rather that the image of God in man was found in man being disposed toward God, when not in rebellion against God.

3.) Natural Law advocates work assiduously to make sure that religion is not the ruling principle in every area of life. Whether it is the stout Natural Law types like R2K, or whether it is the Amber Ale Natural Law types, both try to place some kind of buffer zone between religion and every area of life to the end of muting the impact of religion.