Podcast: Covenant Theology 101 (Guy Waters)

November 02, 2020 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Understanding Biblical Covenants

In this episode, Guy Waters discusses how to understand the biblical covenants and how they can help us read Scripture rightly. He addresses what people often get wrong when it comes to covenant theology, highlights the progressive nature of God's promises in the Bible, and explains where he thinks dispensationalism and new covenant theology miss the mark.

Covenant Theology

Covenant Theology

Guy Prentiss Waters, J. Nicholas Reid, John R. Muether

This book explores the biblical covenants and how they form the structure of the Bible and inform the Christian life. Featuring contributions from 26 scholars, this monumental work in reformed scholarship is biblically grounded, systematically conveyed, and historically connected.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:32 - A Brief Summary of Covenant Theology

Matt Tully
Guy, thank you so much for joining us on The Crossway Podcast today.

Guy Waters
Thank you for having me.

Matt Tully
If you had to summarize covenant theology—this large thing that we're going to talk about today—into just a couple of sentences, what would you say?

Guy Waters
Covenant theology lets us appreciate the unity of the Bible; and not only the unity of the Bible, but within that the diversity—both of which God has built into this book that he's given us and that he's authored. Covenant theology helps us to appreciate what's at the heart and center of the biblical message, which is the gospel. Covenant theology helps to unpack those riches and helps us to see the gospel in wonderful ways.

Matt Tully
Would you say it's like a theological framework for reading the Bible, interpreting the Bible?

Guy Waters
It is. In the first instance, covenant theology helps us to pick up any part of the Scripture and see it in relation to the rest of Scripture. It gives us a measure of confidence as we pick up different books of the Bible and we try to read them and apply them. It also helps us with the message of the Bible—what is the Bible trying to say? Covenant theology is not to the side of what the Bible is really about, but it helps us to understand that main message more richly.

Matt Tully
Are there any organizing principles, or pillars, to covenant theology that you can think of that help us see how the whole system fits together?

Guy Waters
Yes. When we come to the Bible, there are two main covenants. In the garden of Eden we see the covenant that God makes with Adam, and the Scripture there and elsewhere helps us to see that that covenant was made with Adam and with his ordinary descendants. He is a representative for them.

Matt Tully
Where do we see that? In my memory of Genesis 1–3 I don't remember that word coming up explicitly anywhere in that passage.

Guy Waters
That's right. The word covenant isn't used; but when we look at that arrangement that God makes with Adam, you see promise, you see a command, you see a curse, you see applied a blessing. Those are the elements of what will later, when they're grouped together, of what will later be called a covenant. Hosea 6 arguably refers to what God did with Adam in the garden as a covenant. And when the apostle Paul parallels Adam and Christ, we know that the work of Christ inaugurated the new covenant: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25). Every time we receive the Lord's Supper we hear those words. Jesus, among many other things, is saying, You need to understand my work in terms of this covenant that God has made. If Jesus's work is parallel to Adam's work, then we should understand Adam's work covenantally as well.

Matt Tully
So that's been getting at the covenant in the garden with Adam, and then we have Jesus in the new covenant. What do we make of all those covenants in between that we read about all throughout the Old Testament? What are those covenants, and then how do those fit in?

Guy Waters
Good question. The covenant that God makes with Adam in the garden was based on his obedience. We know that Adam didn't obey, and because he didn't obey, he died. We have died in him—in Adam, all die (1 Cor. 15:22). The good news, of course, is that that's not the end of the story. God pursues our first parents, and the gospel promise is first announced to them in Genesis 3:15—the seed that God would raise up to crush the serpent. What we see as we read on through the rest of Scripture is a succession of covenant, and those are administrations, in succession, of that one gracious covenant that God has made in Jesus Christ with his people. From the very beginning, Christ is at the very heart of that promise: I"m going to send my Son, and this is what he's going to do—deliver my people from sin. And that promise gets revealed more fully and more clearly as we move into the days of Noah; and then Abraham; and then Israel under Moses; and then David; and then this new covenant we start to read about in the Prophets until we come to the glorious fulfillment consummation in the new covenant as we encounter it in the New Testament.

Matt Tully
So there's this progressive nature to the covenants, ultimately culminating in Jesus in the new covenant?

Guy Waters
Exactly. One illustration that many writers have used is that it's like a tree. You start with an acorn and it becomes a sapling and then it becomes a little tree and then it becomes a great oak. It's the same tree, but it's growing. And that's what we get to witness as we read the Bible from start to finish is these promises, which God administers by way of covenant, growing and flowering until they come to their intended fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus.

Matt Tully
You mentioned that the covenant with Adam was conditional and that he failed to live up to his side of the covenant and, therefore, had to die. Does that imply that the other covenants that are all part of this greater gracious covenant in Christ that followed were unconditional?

Guy Waters
They're not conditional the way that the covenant that God made with Adam was conditional. This is part of the good news—that Jesus undertakes the conditions that we, as sinners, we cannot and will not fulfill. God requires obedience, and as sinners we can't yield perfect obedience to his law. Jesus does that on our behalf. We owe a debt to God, as he is just and we have violated his law. Jesus steps in and pays that penalty at the cross. But that doesn't mean then that we're free to live as we please. Being in covenant with God means that as we receive Christ, that faith is going to respond in a harvest of obedience to God. And that obedience must be there. That's necessary. It's not optional or discretionary. But that obedience doesn't make us right with God. That obedience is itself a provision of this gracious covenant. It's a way for us to see that the faith that I claim to have is real faith, and it's a way to glorify God who has saved us as we take up the commands of his law.

09:28 - Covenants in the Ancient World

Matt Tully
I want to return that—the connection between this idea of covenants and the gospel—but before we get there, what is a covenant? You mentioned some of the elements of covenant that we see in Scripture, but even that term and concept itself has a pretty rich, ancient cultural background to it that helps us understand what's going on when we read about the covenants in the Old Testament. Can you briefly explain what is a covenant?

Guy Waters
You're absolutely right. Covenants were part of the ancient world that the Israelites inhabited. We don't have covenants today in the same way, but there are still some reminiscence of them.

Matt Tully
Would a legal document that we sign be similar? Did covenants have the legal kind of implications that we would think of today?

Guy Waters
It would, yes. Today, for instance, we speak of a marriage covenant—two people come together, formalizing the relationship publicly, solemnly, with a vow—and they pledge themselves one to the other. That's a bond that is formed, and it's a bond that mustn't be broken. I live in a neighborhood that is a covenant community. We have to sign an agreement that we're not going to put furniture on the front lawn, or some other such thing.

Matt Tully
It sounds like an HOA.

Guy Waters
Exactly. If you violate the terms of that covenant, we have a very vigilant management association that will let you know, and there are penalties to be paid. Covenant was very much part of the ancient world, but it's not something we're not familiar with even though we don't use that word nearly the way that the ancients did. But in the ancient world, covenants were made sometimes between equals, often between those who were not equals. For example, a powerful lord and a less powerful lord. What a covenant did is it formalized a relationship between two people, and there were promises, there were conditions (or terms). I promise you this: life and security. You owe me this: taxes, tribute, etc. There will be great blessing if you keep the terms of this covenant. You will flourish under this covenant relationship. But there are also sanctions. If you fail—if you don't keep your side of the covenant—I'm going to come in and let you know about it. Bible scholars—and we have contributors in our volume who talk about this—confirm that this was very much part of the world in which the first readers of the Old Testament inhabited. So when God came to them and he said, We're in relationship, and this covenant is going to formalize and advance this relationship, that wasn't a brand new idea. They had some context for understanding that.

Matt Tully
You mentioned the covenant with Adam, the new covenant with Christ, and you mentioned the covenant with Noah. What are other covenants that we read about in the Bible?

Guy Waters
We see a covenant that God makes with Adam after the fall—Genesis 3:15 and following. We see a covenant, of course, that God makes with Noah—Genesis 6 and Genesis 9. We see a covenant that God makes with Abraham. That word is used in Genesis 17, but what God is doing with Abraham, in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15, I think we have to understand is part of that one covenant God made with Abraham. There is, of course—and this is what most people think of when they think of covenant—is the covenant that God made with Israel through Moses on Mt. Sinai. And then, of course, there is the covenant that God makes with David. We read about it in 2 Samuel 7. The word is not used there, but it is used in the Psalms to describe that arrangement. And that chapter, and prophecies connected with it, are quoted so often in the New Testament about the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we have the promised new covenant in Jeremiah 30–33. And it's referenced in other Prophets as well, but that will get picked up, in so many words, in the New Testament.

14:45 - A Brief Summary of Dispensationalism

Matt Tully
Covenant theology is often contrasted with dispensationalism. What might a brief summary of dispensationalism sound like?

Guy Waters
Dispensationalism is going to look at the history of redemption and see it in terms of a sequence of dispensations where God will come to people, he will give them a trial or task, and inevitably people will fail. And that will lead to the next dispensation. But they're not connected the way that I've described covenants as being connected. Covenant theology sees a single set of redemptive promises, for one people of God, in all of redemptive history. Classically, dispensationalism would say that God has two peoples: you have Israel, and you have the church. There are promises and dispensations that relate to each. So that would be a very different way of understanding the structure of the Bible and of thinking about God's purposes in history.

Matt Tully
One way that covenant theologians will often refer to the views of dispensationalists is that the church was God's plan B. Do you feel like that's a fair characterization of what a dispensationalist would say? And then I have the inverse question as well.

Guy Waters
You have to be so careful about generalizing dispensational theology because there's been so much in the way of development, and there's a lot of diversity today. A lot of developments within dispensationalism—and I say this as a covenant theologian—seem to me to be coming closer to covenant theology.

Matt Tully
With like, progressive dispensationalism?

Guy Waters
Exactly. I'm very happy to see that, and I want to affirm the good movement that I'm witnessing there. But in it's early and classical forms, yes, the church is a parenthesis. It is plan B. Israel rejected Jesus Christ, we moved to plan B, and then there still awaits a resumption of God's plan and purpose for Israel.

Matt Tully
And to be fair, I think there are some passages—Paul comes to mind—where he says things that maybe have that flare to them, that Israel rejected their Messiah, and now God has brought in the Gentiles as a way to make them jealous, that they might return to him. So how would a covenant theologian read that? Why doesn't that mean what a dispensationalist would take that to mean?

Guy Waters
We would certainly affirm what the apostle Paul is saying in those passages. Where we would differ with our dispensational brothers is that you can't infer that God has two peoples and two purposes. I think as Paul shows, particularly in the epistle to the Romans, what God is doing with Israel and with the Gentiles is part of a purpose to save a people—one people. As Paul leads to his crescendo—“In this way, all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26)—there's that beautiful image of the olive tree. There are branches that are broken off and grafted back in, but God's got one tree, and that tree, in the end, will be populated with a fullness of Israelites and a fullness of Gentiles who are embracing the same Savior, the same set of promises, and who are grafted into the same tree. As God is doing this mysterious thing in redemptive history, it's with an eye towards that one set of promises, and with an eye towards that one people.

Matt Tully
On the other side, sometimes dispensationalists might say that a covenant theologian believes that the church just replaces Israel. Does that feel like a fair characterization?

Guy Waters
I wouldn't characterize it that way at all. I've heard that charge made, but I don't think it really fairly captures what covenant theology is trying to say. We're not saying the church replaces Israel, what we're saying is the church is the people of God in her maturity, as Israel was the people of God under tutelage—a child not of age. And so we're looking at one people, but in two different phases of the outworking of God's plan. So, to say that the church replaces Israel, I think, misses it. What we're saying, rather, is the maturation of God's purpose in and for one people.

20:06 - Doctrinal Implications of Covenant Theology

Matt Tully
Now I want to turn to some of the particular doctrinal implications of covenant theology. I think probably one of the big things that comes to mind in discussions of covenant theology and dispensationalism is eschatology—the end times. Is covenant theology tied to any particular view of the end times?

Guy Waters
Covenant theology is not wed to a particular, or single, view of the end times. Today many covenant theologians are amillennials, but many are—and have been—post-millennial. And there are a few historic pre-millennials folk that are floating around. It's a wonderful intramural, in-house debate. I'm an amillennial myself and would make the case for that, but there is a certain bounded diversity within covenant theology on that specific question.

Matt Tully
How about baptism? Is there any kind of necessary correlation between who gets baptized, how they're baptized in covenant theology?

Guy Waters
I think that question illustrates the importance of thinking about God's covenants in Scripture carefully. I would argue, as a covenant theologian, that infant baptism is a practice warranted by Scripture in light of its teaching about the Abrahamic covenant and its relationship to the new covenant. One covenant, different administrations. I have Baptist brothers who are discovering the riches of covenant in Scripture, and they've come to different conclusions. I'm glad that we can sit down around the covenants of the Bible and have this discussion.

22:11 - Dividing Lines within Covenant Theology

Matt Tully
That makes me wonder beyond that, what would you say are the main dividing lines within covenant theology? Are there issues that divide brothers and sisters from each other—not in a divisive or unfortunate way—but just to say, These are the main lines of disagreement that we have within this unified camp?

Guy Waters
Probably the biggest one, historically, has been how we understand the nature and role of the Mosaic covenant within God's plan and purpose worked out in history. Jonathan Edwards, at some point in his writings, said divines—that's an older word for theologians—are not in agreement on this question. And if they weren't in agreement in the mid-eighteenth century, they're not in agreement today. There are places in the Scripture where the Mosaic covenant seems like a covenant of works. There are places in Scripture where the Mosaic covenant seems as part of the covenant of grace. For my part, I see the Mosaic covenant as an administration within the covenant of grace administering gospel promises. But I can understand why folks who take a different view of the Mosaic covenant come to the conclusions that they do. It's a difficult question and it's an important question because the Mosaic covenant lies over so much of the Bible, and your answer to that question—What is the Mosaic covenant?—will affect the way you read and apply that part of the Bible. But I'm glad that covenant theology gives us a framework to have that discussion, and that we can do it as brothers with common commitments in the fundamental areas that we've been talking about.

Matt Tully
Where does new covenant theology fit into this? I think that is a term that people have heard in recent years. Maybe there are certain key, prominent figures who have publicly embraced that. What is new covenant theology, and how does that fit into this conversation?

Guy Waters
New covenant theology is—

Matt Tully
It sounds better. It's new.

Guy Waters
Right! New covenant theology takes its name from the new covenant, and I will say one thing it does well is it is looking at the Scripture in terms of a succession of covenants. New covenant theology has found a home most often within Baptist circles. I think where it would differ from the covenant theology that you would find within the historical Presbyterian tradition—the Westminster Standards—is that it would see the new covenant promised by Jeremiah and realized in Christ—it would see that as more unlike than like the covenants that have gone before it at some crucial points. Such as, Who are the members, or participants, in the covenant community?—which would bring in the baptism question. What is the standard? We all agree that God has given us a revealed standard for us to live—what is that standard? Where are we to find it? Are we to go to the Mosaic Law in any way to find that standard as new covenant Christians, or are we to look elsewhere?

Matt Tully
Do you think it's a fair description to say, New covenant theology is covenant theology for Baptists? You mentioned that is one of the primary homes of it—is that where this is originating from?

Guy Waters
I suspect so. Again, with new covenant theology they're looking at the prophecy in Jeremiah of the new covenant, and their reading of those promises—“they will all know me, from the greatest to the least” (Jer. 31:34), and the promises surrounding it—there's a level of plausibility to it. In the end I don't agree with that exegesis, but I do appreciate their trying to wrestle with What is the new covenant in light of what God has told us that the new covenant is?

26:50 - Pitfalls of Covenant Theology

Matt Tully
That's helpful. You've talked a lot about the strengths of new covenant theology and the ways it helps us read and understand the Bible and salvation and the gospel. For someone who comes to the conviction that covenant theology is true, what are some of the dangers or ditches that they could maybe fall into that they would want to be aware of?

Guy Waters
I think one thing that's important to stress is when we say that the structure of biblical revelation is covenantal—that God has revealed himself, and particularly his plan to redeem a people in Christ—we rightly say covenant theology captures that. But that does not mean that there aren't other strands of biblical teaching. The kingdom of God, for instance. This is not a zero sum affair, so that if you're going to emphasize covenant you're de-emphasizing everything else. Covenant integrates, of course, with all of the other themes and strands of biblical revelation, but I don't think it's one among many. For the reasons I've mentioned I think it sits atop some of these other themes because it simply runs the course from start to finish, and it touches on those matters that are so central to the gospel.

Matt Tully
You're saying that sometimes people try to run everything through the grid of covenant, and it kind of breaks down?

Guy Waters
It has happened. People with a certain zeal for covenant lose, I think, the proportion that covenant theologians have always maintained as they take up the Scripture. So being a covenant theologian doesn't mean you're going to find covenant under every rock and tree. Being a covenant theologian doesn't mean every third word of my Bible teaching or sermon has to be the word “covenant.” That's not what covenant theology is about.

29:15 - A Final Exhortation

Matt Tully
What would be a succinct exhortation or argument that you would offer to the Baptist listening right now? Maybe they're Reformed Baptist or traditionally dispensational in their thinking about these things—what's a short exhortation or encouragement that you would give them to maybe reconsider covenant theology for the first time?

Guy Waters
I think what I would encourage them is what I would encourage anyone. I don't think we're in a place in the church today where covenant theology has been tried and been found wanting. I think we're in a place where, to paraphrase Chesterton, it hasn't been tried at all. And that's not to cast blame or aspersion. I think covenant theology is experiencing a resurgence. And so I would just encourage brethren of all stripes, whether you have some reserve or whether there's openness, read it in its historical sources, read biblical treatments of it, weigh it against the Scripture, and come to your own conclusions. But by all means, don't miss out on the opportunity to delve more deeply into the teaching of Scripture.

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