mlqurgw said:
There is a thread over in B/A concerning replacement theology that I have been debating in. I am not asking that you enter into the debate but just want to make sure that one of my statements in the thread is correct. I have made the statement and have been arguing that Covenant Theology isn't replacement Theology. I have stated that Covenant Theology nowhere teaches that the Church replaced Israel. If I am wrong please tell me where. I do not want to misrepresent Covenant Theology.
Sure, it's not replacement theology. Who's actually asserting the salvation plan of Israel has been replaced? Not Covenant theology, but Dispensational.
On the variety of other errors about Covenant theology in the first two pages:
Covenantal systematics may assume overarching covenants of grace and works, true. But that doesn't mean there isn't some overarching principle of the covenants that do indeed form a covenant of grace and a covenant of works.
These overarching principles are administered differently at different times by successive agreements, which Scripture calls covenants. These administrations are indeed distinct. No one in Covenant theology has ever said differently to my knowledge. Westminster goes so far as to call them dispensations (as well as administrations). But they aren't separate, replacing covenants. All the covenants operate together and together their stipulations and fulfilments form new economies of the Covenant of Grace.
Abraham an unconditional covenant? It wasn't. Cf. Genesis 17. It has stipulations. You can clearly get tossed out of the Abrahamic covenant for nonperformance.
Distinctiveness of two gospels? They aren't. In that same book (Galatians 1, around 1:6 or so) you'll find Paul asserting any other gospel is
anathema.
Even Covenant theology accepts a number of distinctions between Israel as a nation and the church as the body of Christ. The issue is who is God's promised people? It's the true Israel, which is also the true Church.
On not handling eschatology in a biblical-historical mode they've clearly not read Vos. No dispensational he!
Indeed I've met plenty of Dispensationalists with a patently fable-oriented view of past history -- that Israel's past is only valuable as spiritual allegory for our lives today.
On placing the believer under law -- that's just a little strange. Why have a covenant of works to reject if we're under the law to be saved? Hm? Or do you mean the way Paul establishes the Law for people of faith?
Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. Rom 3:30-31
