A new rant on Covenant Theologians

 Although I am much more aligned with Covenant Theology than Dispensationalism, every once in a while I read something that gets under my skin. Hence this rant.

Every doctrine under the mantel of Covenant Theology could be correct (it’s manifestly not the case, given they have internal squabbles), and I would still have serious reservations about the coterie of covenant theologians. In my experience they add a burdensome legalistic yoke to the gospel, and in the process transform what is light and beautiful (yet not trivial) into an unwieldy and inconsistent Rube Goldberg of derived doctrines that seek to nail down a meticulously detailed "The Doctrine of God" that is a) not taught in scripture and b) given (a)  is certainly not of primary importance and perhaps not even of secondary importance.

And while they (covenant theologians) are usually smart enough to allow that their backing confessions (WCF, LBCF) and litany of derived doctrines are not on par with scripture, in practice they always, always, always treat them on equal footing. The usual non-explanation for this misdirection is: “while our confession is not scripture, we believe it to be the best possible summary of scripture.” With this blunt instrument in hand, they proceed to

1. Become beholden to their man-made confession, because they recognize if any of it falls, if any  (the Pope is the antichrist!) is found to be wrong or simply anachronistic, the whole house of cards will come crashing down.
2. Once they are beholden to the confession, they elevate the theologians directly and indirectly responsible for the confession or who champion the confession to a status of effective infallibility.

The bottom line is that they impose the considerable weight of their derived doctrines on those they are shepherding and teaching, and blithely dub them as Great Christian Truths. Doctrines like Impassibility, “Types” of Law, Impeccability, Divine Simplicity, and (extreme) Immutability. Not to mention an incredibly detailed (way beyond anything found in scripture) blueprint of the Trinity.

All these doctrines have some basis of truth to them, but the details are not to be found in scripture. Yes God (and most importantly his promises) are taught to be unchangeable and hence trustworthy. But that is the extent to which immutability is taught in scripture. How are the well-developed reformed doctrines of Impassibility and Immutability (where all of the legion of references to God's emotions are purely anthropomorphic) obtained, if not from scripture, which leaves the nuts and bolts (I would think on purpose) as a mystery? The reformed theologians have a time-tested algorithm. It is used in every doctrine that they say is not cardinal, but only while their fingers are crossed behind their backs. The algorithm is this:

Scriptural Seed + Greek Philosophy → New, man-made doctrine

If you don’t believe me, study the doctrine of Divine Simplicity. There you will see how a pinch of scriptural truth plus a heaping infusion of (fallible) Greek philosophy results in a “Great Christian Truth” that is not found anywhere in your bible. The prophets didn’t teach it. Jesus didn’t teach it. Paul didn’t teach it. Something like Divine Simplicity is probably true, but it was not considered important by the biblical cast of prophets and teachers. And if the doctrine as taught today is correct, it will only be by accident. And yet-- it is not unusual to hear the word "heresy" associated with denial of the doctrine (and other derived doctrines.) (Although the H-word is often deployed coyly, as in: "Now I'm not necessarily calling it heresy, but such and such dead theologian considered denial of this doctrine as heresy. Just saying.")

In addition to strange and divisive doctrines (we were warned about that somewhere), covenant theologians have painted themselves in a corner when it comes to the Law. They break up the law into different types, sometimes three sometimes more, and jettison all but the Ten Commandments. 

The worst explanation for keeping the Decalogue (instead of what the bible clearly teaches—championing the replacement/fuller revelation of God's moral Law from Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount) is that the discarded laws are strictly laws for a covenant, not eternal laws for all time, as are (they claim) the Ten Commandments.

This is very wrong for two reasons. And, strangely, I'll argue that the second reason they are wrong is because they are right.

The first flaw in their reasoning is that the Ten Commandments were unknown until the Exodus. Sure, some (like a prohibition against murder) are obviously eternal. Saying the Decalogue contains some eternal prohibitions does not imply the eternality of all the commandments. For example, there is no scriptural indication whatsoever that any person before the time of the Exodus ever heard of the concept of “Remembering the Sabbath”.

The second reason they are wrong is because they are right. That is, laws of a covenant are indeed null and void at the termination of the covenant. (And some, but not necessarily all, may be adopted by the replacement covenant. Murder is still prohibited.). But the covenant theologians ignore their own rule, because the Ten Commandments are also covenantal laws. How do we know this? Not from Greek Philosophy but from scripture:

⁹ When I went up into the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you, then I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. ¹⁰ Then the Lord delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly. ¹¹ And it came to pass, at the end of forty days and forty nights, that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. (Deut. 9:9-11, NKJV)

Moses himself describes the commandments as covenantal, not eternal.

Covenant theology has many positive aspects, but unfortunately it can also become a flowing fountain of kool-aid which, once consumed, becomes an obsession. Everything must be shoe-horned into its confines. No mystery remains (even those that are meant to remain) that the covenantal framework and Greek Philosophy cannot unravel.