| Covenant Theology & Hermeneutics
I am just about finished with the book The Law is Not of Faith. I highly recommend this work to all, especially those in leadership as this book challenges one to rediscover the importance of understanding Covenant Theology within the rubric of the republication, or better, “recapitulation”, of the covenant of works principle. In short, the recapitulation prescription within Covenant Theology not only aids one to see and thereby balance the “law-gospel” paradigm (especially within the realm of formal kerygmatic preaching) but also safeguards against skewing the doctrine of justification—i.e., viewing the covenants from the eyes of the FV / NPP—a point also made in so many words by the authors in the introduction.
What really got my attention was the first essay by J.V. Fesko “Calvin and Witsius on the Mosaic Covenant”. Though the information found in this essay was not new to me it did rekindle and reinforce some thoughts that have been brewing during the past couple of years. In short, I have learned most, if not all, doctrinal disagreements come down to differences in one’s hermeneutics employed to understand the nature of the Old and New Covenants, i.e., their relationship to each other including their continuity and discontinuity. This hermeneutic grid will always shape one’s theological presuppositions / theological system and influence how we live as Christians.
Calvin’s hermeneutic emphasized and prioritized the grammatical-historical while Witsius gave more priority to a redemptive-historical. In the end I firmly believe this affected their understanding of the relationship between the Mosaic / Old Covenant and Covenant of Grace. Witsius believed the two to be distinct while Calvin, like many of the framers of the WMCF, believed the Old Covenant was of the CoG but a different administration.
As I began to focus more on the hermeneutics of the past “heroes of the faith” I began to see this same pattern fully emerge. Moreover, we can expand this to include the relationship between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. For example, Owens’s hermeneutic gave more priority to the redemptive-historical and thus ends up viewing the two covenants (old and new) as distinct (this is not to say that he denied any continuity).
Though I have not exhaustively studied the works and hermeneutics of many of the framers of the WMCF, I will theorize that many of them possessed a hermeneutic that gave more priority to the grammatical-historical and gave priority to the discipline of systematic theology versus biblical theology. I have also come to see this same pattern within contemporary scholarship. Namely, the more a person views Scripture and gives priority to gospel-centered / redemptive-historical hermeneutics and thereby allows biblical theology to shape one’s systematic theology, the more likely they will see the two covenants as distinct.
JWJ
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Jim Jarantowski
Minister of the Gospel
(Currently residing at Covenant Presbyterian Church, New Berlin, WI)
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