Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants [Hardcover]

There are two basic approaches to what is called "biblical theology." One is to identify a singular central theme that brings clarity to the structure and theological purpose of the Bible. The other is to use a generalized understanding of the structure and theological purpose of the Bible to bring clarity to a theme (which then, in turn, brings more clarity to the Bible). This latter type better characterizes the approach of "Kingdom through Covenant." (For an example of the former type, see James Hamilton's book "God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment".) Though the thesis of this book argues that the covenants tie the biblical narrative together, thus making covenants an extremely important theme, the authors do not seek to prove that the covenants constitute the "theological center" of the Bible.

The academic advance this book seeks to make is a biblical-theological support for a covenantal understanding that effectively falls between Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology. Though the authors' position is indeed unique in relation to these other two systems, it is by no means new: this book provides a defense of what I would call a "baptistic" covenant theology. This means that while they side with Dispensationalists in rejecting the Reformed teaching about the exact continuity between circumcision and baptism, they take the side of Reformed theologians in affirming that the land promise to Israel are fulfilled in Christ under the New Covenant, particularly as his work results in the inauguration of the New Creation.

What you will not find in this book is an attack on any theological position. You will not find endless rhetoric and catchy phrases that make Dispensational or Reformed theologians seem dangerous or inept. The authors certainly do not hold back from saying what they think needs to said in defense of their own position and in opposition to the other two, yet they do so in a respectable and unexaggerated manner. They are careful to recognize the similarities in the two views between which they mediate, as well as the similarities between their own view and each of the other positions. One way they are able to do this is through careful examination of the presuppositions and hermeneutical principles they and the opposing theologians use. Thus, Gentry and Wellum present, articulate, and defend a certain hermeneutic, which accounts for presuppositions about the nature of Scripture, and discipline themselves throughout the book to apply those principles consistently.

No doubt Reformed and Dispensational Christians will find the arguments of this book to be challenging, if not compelling. However, if they can make it through chapter three (the chapter which presents the authors' hermenuetical methods) without being convinced, there's a good chance they'll remain unmoved. But this is one of the things that makes this book great: usually the dividing line between two theological positions lies in an underlying hermenuetical difference. By accurately presenting their opponents' hermeneutics and showing how their own principles--or at least the application of similar principles--differs from them, they preclude needlessly talking past their opponents and vise versa. However, as Gentry and Wellum consistently apply this hermenuetic to Scripture, and as the reader can then see what clarity and relevance it brings to the text, their argument becomes that much stronger.

So is this book monumental? Is it a work that will stand at the top of the list of books every Dispenational or Reformed theologian will have to address before presenting or defending their own view? I believe the answer is yes. (That means if you're a pastor, a Christian teacher, or someone interested in theology and/or the future of the church, you should buy this book and read it.) This of course will be more true for the Dispensationalists, since they have a shorter theological heritage. But I feel comfortable saying that this work is monumental because Drs. Gentry and Wellum are accomplished theologians who have presented here what may be the finest and most notable scholarly book defending a Calvinistic/Baptist/anti-dispensational covenant theology. In addition, the hermentuetical principles they apply are simple and sensible,and thus, the reader doesn't feel like he is being proselytized into a complex system for piecing the Bible together; instead, the writers' approach is methodical, methodologically conscious, in-depth, and meticulous.

Readers will find the content easy to follow and not overly--that is, unnecessarily--technical. That's to say one does not need a degree in theology to understand this book. Nevertheless, the length may dissuaded some people from reading it. Yet, if you finish it, you will not be disappointed; a Christian who perseveres to the end (of this book) will find that they will not only have a greater understanding of the Scriptures (specifically as it relates to the progression of revelation and the covenants, as well as some other themes), but a greater appreciation for it as well.

Perhaps the most substantial publication on covenant theology in recent times just arrived in the mail. Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum's 850 page work Kingdom Through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants aims to set the record straight as to how redemptive history ought to be understood, avoiding errors in both dispensational and covenant theology camps. This won't be a full review, but just a quick take on this new and exciting work.

First of all, the book is great. It's very thorough, easy to understand, and scriptural in its argumentation. In many ways, it's almost an expanded version of Nichols' Covenant Theology: A Reformed Baptistic Perspective (though with some obvious theological modifications). In fact, the authors commented on that work in the preface:

[Nichols' Covenant Theology] assumes much of the standard exegesis found in classic covenant theology and seeks to modify it in a way that is consistent with Baptist theology. Yet research during the last fifty years provides information on culture, language, and literary structures that both makes possible and necessitates exegesis de novo. (13)

Although I think this overlooks the more positive contribution Nichols' work makes in the bigger picture and how it is remarkably similar to their work, Gentry and Wellum are right that there is still room for more thorough and scholarly exegesis, and they do well to provide it.

The authors also comment regarding Beale's A New Testament Biblical Theology:

It is filled with rich insights and is worth careful reflection...But...Beale fails to use the covenants to develop adequately and properly the plot structure between creation and new creation. It is not the case that the canon merely provides a repetition of patterns and themes in Genesis 1-3 as we progress across redemptive history. Instead, the covenants provide the structure and unfold the developing plot line of Scripture, and a detailed investigation of those covenants is necessary to understand God's eternal plan of salvation centered in Christ. Each covenant must be first placed in its own historical/textual context and then viewed intertextually and canonically if we are truly going to grasp something of the whole counsel of God, especially the glory of the new covenant our Lord has inaugurated. (14)

Broad strokes again, but I tend to agree again here with the authors, especially in stressing the importance of digesting the biblical data regarding God's covenants and letting that be our primary lens in interpreting redemptive history (as opposed to taking on assumptions about seven dispensations, or three covenants, or what have you), as well as in identifying the errors (e.g., paedobaptism) that an improper covenant theology will yield.

As for the basic theology of their proposal, here are some of the corrective arguments made by the authors (see chapter 16), and I frame the points in terms of contrasts not to make the work sound polemic, but just to more clearly identify the theology:

"Covenant of works" perhaps isn't the best language for what was going on in the garden, but there certainly was a covenant made in Genesis 1-3 and it is vitally important to understand.
"The covenant of grace" perhaps isn't the best way of understanding the continuity in redemptive history; plurality of covenants (more immediately biblical in Scripture) that are part of the one plan of God is probably better.
It is too simplistic to categorize all covenants as just "conditional" or "unconditional," or simply to adopt the "vassal-suzerainty treaty"/"royal grant" paradigm of Kline and Horton - though much can be learned from such parallels in the ancient Near East. (cf. Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses, KA Kitchen's Historical Reliability of the OT and their comments on the parallels identified by Kline and Horton).
Dispensationalists miss the mark when they assert that the New Covenant was made with physical Israel only (again, not a new argument but one that continually needs to be heard, and Gentry and Wellum do a fantastic job on this one).
Covenant theologians miss the mark when they assert that the New Covenant is still mixed like the Old Covenant because the members of the New Covenant are a regenerate community (good to see Dr. James White's journal articles on Hebrews 8 being cited!) and thus covenant theologians also err when they assert paedobaptism as being supported by covenant theology. (Indeed, I'm not sure any other book so concisely and successfully pulls up the rug from underneath the paedobaptist argument from covenant theology).
Baptists miss the mark when they assert "Lord's day" theology (Sunday Sabbath) (Carson's position is obviously favored here).
Christian Zionists miss the mark when they assert their holy land theology (that ethnic Jews have an unconditional right over a plot of land in the Middle-East). (Brief complaint: why on earth wasn't the most recent scholarly work on this subject, Burge's Jesus and the Land, 2010, cited in the thorough discussion on this subject? This was a poor oversight; Burge's stuff really needed to get into their discussion)
Nehemiah Coxe (possible general editor or LBCF 1689) misses the mark for saying that there are two covenants that make up the Abrahamic covenant.
Arminians and modified Calvinists miss the mark when they assert that Christ died to make salvation possible to everyone, or died to make salvation possible to everyone and also to secure it for the elect.

Much more could be said. But I think that ahead of Horton, Vos, and Goldsworthy (all of who are great, by the way), one should pick up Kingdom Through Covenant by Gentry and Wellum.

A brief summary of my long response: Parts 1 and 3 are clear and well written. They summarize the major points between Covenant and Dispensational theologies, and give a good summary of the Baptist position. Unfortunately, the exegesis section (part 2) greatly weakens all the claims. Part 2 is a long terrible read that is actually a collection of loosely edited articles on topics that are somewhat relevant to the book. Buy this book only if you have to or if you want a good summary of the new covenant theology in parts 1 and 3 and would rather have something new rather than old.

Begin actual review:

I'm (as of Nov. '12) finishing up my fourth year of seminary, and I had the opportunity to read this book for my capstone class on biblical theology, and the reviews of the book were very good (see the other reviews above). This was the only major book for the class (supplemented with articles and exegesis), so we had to read it closely: outlining main points, summarizing the argument, and responding and interacting with the claims.

After reading the book through, I'm left with the sense that this is one of the most disappointing books I've ever read. It's not the worst book, but it's certainly disappointing because of such high expectations and such a weak central section.

So here's a review, so that you (our potential purchaser) might know a little better what you're getting into. My goal is to try to give a fair summary of the book and what it claims to do, and then evaluate it.

A note before I begin:

I'm a paedobaptist at a Baptist school, so my biases will be evident. I'm asking different questions (perhaps) that they are answering. But I hope that many of the points I'm going to make are agreed on by others who may read this book: Baptist, dispensational, or paedobaptist alike. I'm not going to interact with the actual argumentation at length (consider looking at the reviews on the Gospel Coalition website for some reviews that interact with the argumentation).

A brief summary of the book:

The goal of the book is to demonstrate the centrality of covenants to the plot of the Bible, and also to suggest a resolution to many theological differences between covenant theology (CT) and dispensational theology (DT) by carefully expositing the biblical covenants in their proper contexts. In short, they are arguing for a "middle way," by taking some DT distinctives (regenerate new covenant church) and CT distinctives (centrality of the covenants and the organic development from Israel to the church). The title of this book, "Kingdom through Covenant" summarizes the whole of this system: God is establishing/revealing/saving his kingdom by way of covenants. They call this "progressive covenantalism," or "new covenant theology," stressing the basic continuity in the covenants, yet a development across covenants.

The book is divided in to three major parts. The first and the third are written by Dr. Stephen Wellum, who is a theology professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In the first part (chapters 1-3), he lays the foundation for what the book is about. He talks about the importance of covenants, compares and contrasts DT and CT, and presents the chief hermeneutical issues in understanding the covenants.

The second part (by Dr. Peter Gentry, an OT professor at SBTS) is a walkthrough of the basic covenants of the Bible - Noah, Creation (they explain why the order is reversed in the book), Abraham, Mosaic, David, New Covenant in Isaiah/Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ephesians 4:15.

In the third part, Dr. Wellum summarizes the main points from Dr. Gentry's work, and then turns to address the theological implications, with particular focus on the discussion between DT and CT: Is the New Covenant church composed of only regenerate believers or is it a mixed body? Should infants be baptized into the covenant? Are the land promises (and by implication, the separation between Israel and the church) still in full effect? Dr. Wellum stresses the basic continuity of the covenants while still stressing the newness of the new covenant. Thus, land promises are typologically fulfilled in the new creation for the whole church, not just Israel, while only believers are to be baptized and only the regenerate are true members of the new covenant.

Response

Given that it's a 3 part book, it seems fair to respond to each part individually:

Part 1 [Summary of issues at hand]- I don't know much about DT, so I can't evaluate the summaries from that position, but I felt like Dr. Wellum's summary of CT was fair. He sets up the key questions of debate and does a good job summarizing the basic CT/DT arguments for their positions. Some of the arguments for the CT position could have been expressed better, but he wasn't tearing down straw men. It did seem like there were a number of places where he took potshots (inserting his disagreements in the summaries repeatedly), but given that I'd probably do the same if I were writing a book on a similar topic, we'll let that pass. He also does a good job unpacking the term "typology" and how DT and CT read typology differently. One thing I didn't like was the fact that the author labels the CT position on children in the covenant as "the genealogical principle," without (to my knowledge) adequately explaining or defining it. When he labels something a "principle" it feels like he's implying that it is imposed on the text. I'd describe "the genealogical principle" in this way: "God's consistent dealing with not just individuals, but households and families," which makes it sound a lot more positive. But as a whole, it was a good section. The arguments/summaries are clear, and he does a good job summarizing where the exegesis should go.

Part 2 [Exegesis of covenants]- Personally, this was the most frustrating portion of the whole book. And since it spans ~450 of the ~700 pages of the book, that was a long time to be frustrated. In short, while Dr. Gentry does a decent job of pointing to the different covenants and unpacking the literary structure of the text, I repeatedly wondered where he was going. The section headings didn't follow a logical order. There was no clear goal or direction. The summaries didn't connect the exegesis to the claims made in part 1. Frankly, these chapters needed major revision.

Part 2 feels much more like a collection of articles on isolated topics (which, a number of them were) than a close exegesis of the covenant passages in order to prove the central claims of the book. Dr. Gentry spends a great deal of time focusing on what feel like minor issues (for example, 20 pages spent on a translation of Isaiah 55:3 in the chapter on 2 Samuel 7), without addressing the major issues like, "how does your exegesis differ from DT or CT?" Yet, he seems to assume that he is dealing with those major issues by repeatedly claiming that "many people have misunderstood this covenant by not putting it in its proper context" at the beginning of his chapters, but not actually showing how his exegesis (which doesn't seem to differ much from what I would guess is a traditional CT reading) improves or goes against DT or CT. He repeats himself in various places (entire paragraphs lifted, repetition of a "holographic image," emphasis on the "justice-righteousness" word-pairs). And what was continually very frustrating, he often has page-long block quotations of an author, with no summary statements (consider 332-3 for one egregious example).

He puts a lot of weight on perceived chiasms that span multiple chapters and yet omit other chapters, without actually demonstrating the chiasm, but rather asserting it. As I checked some of his chiasms, I was completely unconvinced. Maybe they were there, but it wasn't clear, and for how much weight he puts on them, it was disappointing to see such weak argumentation.

Also, when I was trying to interact with what he was saying, felt like there were a number of areas where his argumentation was simply weak or outright wrong.

Here are four (out of many other possibilities):
1. He claims that Isaiah 24:5, in speaking that "[Israel/Judah] had broken the everlasting covenant" must be referring to breaking the covenant with Noah. But why must "everlasting covenant" refer to Noah? He doesn't address the fact that "everlasting covenant" is used of all sorts of covenants: Abraham, Phineas, Sabbath, Priesthood, David. But then again, this point isn't even relevant to the central contentions of his chapter, so why is he spending so much time on it?
2. He claims that God's command to "walk before me" to Abraham means that Abraham is to be "his emissary or diplomatic representative" (260). But this is not what the author he just cited on that page summarized! One only needs to read over the summary statements that Dr. Gentry quotes John Walton as saying to see that "walk before me" is about the conduct of the individual kings or priests, not about their relationship to the nation.
3. He claims that the "context of Psalm 87 [being related to Psalm 83 and 48] decisively requires that we interpret the positive invitation to the "peoples" in Psalm 87 as the foreign nations and not as Diaspora Jews." (453) Yet as I read over Psalm 83 and 48, not only am I unconvinced that they really are that closely linked to Psalm 87, I am also very unconvinced that they talk positively about the nations. They're discussing their destruction! It may be that "peoples" does refer to the nations, but it's not proven by Psalm 83 and 48.
4. At probably the point most debated between Baptists and CT, in Jeremiah 31's discussion of the New Covenant, he doesn't interact at length with a single theologian on the other side, except to dismiss Joshua Moon's reading as oversimplified. Since this is such a key text for the Baptist argument against CT, it should have been dealt with far more at length. At least summarize other possible readings rather than just asserting your own!

Additionally Dr. Gentry leaves out close exegesis on any of the New Testament passages that would be incredibly relevant for connecting the New Covenant to the Old Covenant(s). No exegesis of Matthew 5:17-20, 2 Cor 3:4-11, Hebrews 9-10, Galatians 3. For a book that makes very specific claims about the relationship of the New Covenant to the Old Covenant(s), the lack of careful attention to the texts of the New Testament is a glaring weakness.

In short, while Dr. Gentry tries to do exegesis to support the central contentions laid out at the beginning of the book, he really ends up greatly weakening the argument. He doesn't synthesize, he majors on the minors, he minors on the majors, he repeats himself, he doesn't seem to understand what a good quotation is and what a bad one is. All in all, very frustrating.

Part 3 [Wellum's synthesis and application to DT/CT]: While this part tried to build on the exegesis done in the previous part, the failure of the previous part to really advance the discussion hinders things. Basically, he summarized some of Gentry's main covenants and restated the Baptist position that the NC was new, so replaced and brought the old covenants to a completion and an end, so therefore the church is a regenerate community and infants should not be baptized. This section was much clearer and better written, though because the discussion was not really advanced in part 2, his claims seem to fall flat for me as I was reading to follow an argument, rather than reading for pleasure. The key assumption that the new covenant brings to a terminus all the other covenants is not argued for exegetically, but rather asserted. He doesn't seem to address adequately the CT argument from the warning passages and dismisses them based on his presupposition that the new covenant community must be regenerate, but that's the whole point of discussion. I'm sure a dispensationalist would also be similarly displeased with his treatment of DT - asserting rather than proving. Then again, given Part 2, there wasn't really much proving that could have been done.

Does the book set out what it aims to do? I think the answer is clearly "no." Even though the summary statements at the beginning and end are good, the center of the book, where the exegesis is, falls very short. I would not recommend anyone reading this book all the way through. Read part 1 and 3 to see what the arguments are about, but then find another book to deal with the relevant texts. This book tries to do too much and fails.