Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism

Covenant theology's architecture rests on three covenants that no biblical narrative enacts. They are theological constructs, arrangements the system argues Scripture presupposes rather than reports, and covenant theologians say so themselves. The Westminster Confession of Faith defines them in chapter 7.

The covenant of redemption is an eternal agreement between the Father and the Son, before creation, in which the Son undertakes to redeem a people given to him. It answers a real question, because the cross was planned rather than improvised, and the New Testament speaks of the Son being sent and of a people given to him.

The covenant of works reads Genesis 2 as a probation with Adam as federal head: a command, a prohibition and a stated penalty. That is what makes the two Adams of Romans 5 legible as a covenantal argument. The Hebrew word berith does not appear in Genesis 2 or 3, so the covenant is inferred from the structure. The usual proof text, Hosea 6:7, can be rendered like Adam, like men, or at Adam as a place name, and the Hebrew alone will not settle it.

The covenant of grace is the beam the whole system carries. It is one saving arrangement established after the fall and administered through each historical covenant in turn, which is how covenant theology can say Abraham and a reader today are saved under the same arrangement. The dispensational objection is that the construct then does the work Scripture gives to the covenants themselves, and the land promise is the first casualty.

This site affirms federal headship and original sin transmitted through Adam's representation, while declining the works-covenant construct built on top of it. The two claims come apart.

Dispensationalism is said to teach two ways of salvation. It teaches one. The tradition's own standard statements say so directly, in Charles Ryrie's Dispensationalism (Moody, 1966) and in Michael Vlach's Dispensationalism: Essential Beliefs and Common Myths (2008). Abraham, David and the reader of this sentence are saved by grace through faith on the ground of Christ's blood. Different arrangements of God's dealings are still one gospel.

Covenant theology is said to be replacement theology. Covenant theologians characteristically say the church is the continuation of the covenant people, and Romans 11's own picture is grafting into a standing root rather than felling the tree. The claim that God is finished with Israel is a separate claim, held by some and rejected by most, and this site condemns it.

Second Timothy 2:15 is said to command the reader to divide the dispensations. The slogan comes from the King James rendering, rightly dividing the word of truth. The Berean Standard Bible renders the same clause correctly handling the word of truth, which is a call to careful workmanship with Scripture. The reading has better arguments and does not need this one.

Progressive dispensationalism, set out by Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock in Progressive Dispensationalism (BridgePoint, 1993), keeps Israel's national future and the literal expectation, and softens the hard partition by reading the Davidic covenant as begun now in the reigning Christ and completed later. The church becomes the kingdom's present phase. Its cost, from the traditional side, is that allowing an inaugurated fulfilment concedes the hermeneutical principle.

Progressive covenantalism, set out by Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum in Kingdom through Covenant (Crossway, 2012), walks the biblical covenants in their own order and argues they climax in Christ, without the covenant of grace overlay and without the Israel and church partition. Its cost, from the dispensational side, is that it still resolves the land and national promises typologically, so on this page's own question it lands nearer covenant theology.

The standard classroom volume is Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies: Four Views on the Continuity of Scripture, edited by Brent Parker and Richard Lucas (IVP Academic, 2022). These authors are living and their work is in copyright, so this site names and dates them and sends the reader to the book itself.

Ezekiel measures a temple in exhaustive detail, with a Zadokite priesthood and a bullock for a sin offering at 43:19. Read covenantally, this is an idealized vision whose substance is Christ and his people, and John finally sees no temple in the city because the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. Restored animal sacrifice would cut against the argument of Hebrews.

Read dispensationally, it is a sanctuary for the coming age, its offerings memorial rather than expiatory, looking back at a finished cross as the Passover looked forward to it. The measurements are given because they are meant to be built. Both readings account for the same chapters, and this page gives no verdict between them.

Read more at Ezekiel's Temple →, read the vision itself, chapter by chapter, with both readings of it.