Part Five Paul Before the Areopagus I want to shift gears a bit and take a look at the “twins” which comprise the Creation Project and that drive it through the instrumentality of the covenants. Those twins being Eschatology and Teleology which I spoke about in the first volume. A good place to start is Paul’s defense at Mars Hill in Acts 17. He is addressing pagan Greeks who have no familiarity with the Scriptures. There would have been fruitless …
Author: Hunter Hays
Part Eight Federal Theology and the Baptism of Infants “[W{hen Reformed people speak of “the covenant,” we are speaking of the one covenant of grace that runs from its seed-promise in Genesis 3:15, was expanded in detail to Abraham in Genesis 15, fulfilled in Christ, and continues throughout time until the consummation. Anyone who has or will ever be saved – in any period of human history – is a member of the covenant of grace.” – Michael G. Brown …
I am not a covenant theologian. However, I am very familiar with it in both its pedo- and credo-baptist forms. While my ongoing series critiquing CT shows that I am in disagreement with many of its major hermeneutical tenets, I want my readers to know that I have a long-standing admiration for CT for its comprehensiveness and its ability to address many areas of Theology and Apologetics. Later in the series I am writing (of which this is an interlude), …
Part Seven I ended the last post talking about how CT reduces the nation of Israel down to Jesus Christ and then interprets the Church in Him to be the “True Israel.” There is more to say about that, but first I think a little more orientation is required. I want to begin this installment with a definition of Covenant Theology from one of its major contemporary practitioners, Ligon Duncan: “Covenant theology is an approach to biblical interpretation that appreciates …
Part Six The Covenant of Grace (2) It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of “the covenant of grace” to Reformed theology. When one reads of “the covenant” in the writings of CT’s the implication is that it is the covenant of grace. When it comes to CT’s comprehending the Bible as a “redemptive-historical” book, the thing that is powering this is the covenant of grace. Hence, “The covenant of grace tells us that the whole Bible is about …
Part Five Some of this post reuses material from a previous article. The Covenant of Grace (1) Covenant theology depends for its credibility upon theological covenants with virtually no exegetical proof. This is especially the case with the “Covenant of Grace.” “[N]ot only do covenant theologians speak of the one people of God in both Testaments, they also affirm that the church existed in the Old Testament. One key linchpin for seeing continuity between the covenants revolves around the centrality …
Part Four The Covenant of Works (2) According to covenant theologians the Covenant of Works was what Adam and Eve were under in the Garden of Eden. As it was a covenant of “works” this means that they were under obligation to maintain “perfect obedience” (Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man, I. 158; cf. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 85). For the CT this is necessary because it is to be paralleled by Christ’s perfect …
A Review of Adam Copenhaver and Jeffrey D. Arthurs, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary for Biblical Preaching and Teaching, Kerux Commentaries, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2022, 335 pages, hdbk. This is the first time I have set my eyes on a Kerux commentary. The series is designed to give exegetical, theological, and homiletical help for the expositor and preacher. This approach is nothing new, although it has not been seen for some time. These kinds of commentaries were quite popular in the …
A Review of Adam Copenhaver and Jeffrey D. Arthurs, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary for Biblical Preaching and Teaching, Kerux Commentaries, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2022, 335 pages, hdbk. This is the first time I have set my eyes on a Kerux commentary. The series is designed to give exegetical, theological, and homiletical help for the expositor and preacher. This approach is nothing new, although it has not been seen for some time. These kinds of commentaries were quite popular in …
Part Three In the first volume of his impressive work The Whole Counsel of God, CT Richard Gamble identifies four covenant types in Scripture. I have no qualm with the first three, but Gamble’s fourth variety of covenant is “one among the three persons of the Godhead.” (I.284). He sees a “hint” of this in the words “Let us make man in our image” in Genesis 1:26, but points to a “clearer example” in Genesis 8:21-22. In this instance “God …
