Gentry / Wellum Kingdom through Covenant (Second Edition)

A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4335-5310-3
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 960 Seiten

Kingdom through Covenant is a careful exposition of how the biblical covenants unfold and relate to one another-a widely debated topic, critical for understanding the narrative plot structure of the whole Bible. By incorporating the latest available research from the ancient Near East and examining implications of their work for Christology, ecclesiology, eschatology, and hermeneutics, scholars Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum present a thoughtful and viable alternative to both covenant theology and dispensationalism. This second edition features updated and revised content, clarifying key material and integrating the latest findings into the discussion.

Peter J. Gentry (PhD, University of Toronto) is professor of Old Testament interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and director of the Hexapla Institute.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gentry, Peter J.

Wellum, Stephen J.

Leseproben

Preface to the Second Edition

We are extremely grateful to Justin Taylor and the entire Crossway team for an opportunity to present a revised edition of Kingdom through Covenant. Although we are delighted in the reception that the first edition (2012) has received and are thankful for how it has stimulated discussion regarding how our triune God’s eternal plan is disclosed to us through the Bible’s covenantal unfolding, we wanted to update parts and clarify others in light of some of the reviews and helpful feedback we have received. In this new edition, we have attempted to read and critically reflect on all the reviews of the first edition of Kingdom through Covenant known to us. Since the book’s publication, we have realized that some matters required correction and other matters clarification, given some of the reviewers’ misunderstandings of our overall proposal. In addition, we have also grown in our understanding of Scripture and further wrestled with issues that did not appear to us when we began this journey. In what follows, we would like to explain what has been updated in each of our respective parts and also how close cooperation and work together have helped us to improve the other’s part and the whole.

Note from Peter Gentry

Serious reflection on all known reviews led me to reconsider my exegesis in a few areas. The one reviewer who noted genuine problems in the exegesis was Doug Moo. He highlighted that the explanation given of “affirm/uphold a covenant” (heqîm berît) in Ezekiel 16 was unsatisfactory. Nor did I explain properly why “cut a covenant” (karat berît) was used of Deuteronomy, since the covenant at Moab appears to be a reaffirmation of the covenant at Sinai. I am grateful for the opportunity to acknowledge my errors and am especially thankful for his review.

Several months of study on Ezekiel 16 led me to a different explanation, which I published in the abridgment of this volume, God’s Kingdom through God’s Covenants (Crossway, 2015). Further research on the literary structure of Deuteronomy, which covered chapters 1–33 and not just 1–28, led me to what I believe is a more satisfactory treatment of the relationship between the covenant at Sinai and the covenant at Moab and to not only why the expression karat berît was necessary for the latter but also why the expression heqîm berît was inappropriate there.

The chapter on Daniel 9 has been completely rewritten. The basic position taken is much the same, but many exegetical issues are reconsidered that make the presentation more satisfactory in dealing with unanswered questions.

Much of the material on the new covenant in the Prophets was reworked. In the first edition, the contribution of each prophet was analyzed within the plot structure of their individual works. At the time, this approach was an advance on previous books on the topic since they did not treat the covenants in this manner. However, what I did not adequately do was consider the chronological development in the Prophets as each prophet meditated on what earlier prophets had spoken and written, thus demonstrating better innerbiblical and intertextual relationships. Thus, Jeremiah clarifies the discussion in Isaiah, and Ezekiel further explains questions unanswered in Jeremiah. In addition, in my discussion of the Prophets’ treatment of the new covenant, I incorporated more material from the New Testament to satisfy some of our critics who did not think we dealt adequately with how the Old Testament’s teaching of kingdom through covenant is fulfilled in the New.

When the first edition of our book went to press, we did not have sufficient time to evaluate Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God’s Saving Purposes (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), by Scott W. Hahn. The comment in the first edition that Hahn is not quite up to date on the ancient Near Eastern cultural setting necessary for the best exegesis remains true. Yet Hahn’s book is full of helpful insights, and we would certainly agree that the covenant at Sinai, in particular, establishes kinship between Yahweh and Israel. The same is true of the Davidic and new covenants.

In 2015, Covenant in the Persian Period: From Genesis to Chronicles appeared, edited by Richard J. Bautch and Gary N. Knoppers (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns). This is a collection of twenty-two essays by an international spectrum of scholars. The advertisement on the back cover claims that the “essays in this new and comprehensive study explore how notions of covenant, especially the Sinaitic covenant, flourished during the Neo-Babylonian, Persian, and early Hellenistic periods.” With no mention of our work and no mention of the three-volume work of over 1,600 pages by Kenneth Kitchen and Paul Lawrence dealing with every covenant, law treatise, and treaty in the ancient Near East from the third millennium to the Hasmonean period,1 it is difficult to consider this work a disinterested and honest treatment of the subject. The title itself, Covenant in the Persian Period, reveals a major bias about the origin of the documents of the Old Testament, which we seek to counter in our volume. In the end, the treatment of the covenants presented is neither comprehensive nor new.

Finally, in 2017, Biblical Theology: Covenants and the Kingdom of God in Redemption History, by Jeong Koo Jeon, was published (Eugene: OR, Wipf & Stock). This is a work by a systematic theologian committed to classical covenant theology. Strangely, all the book does is explain and reaffirm the framework of the system and then cite passages of Scripture within this framework as though the evidence is obvious, without any sense that it is ultimately the overall metanarrative that is at debate. One can only show that one’s metanarrative is correct when it encompasses more data than other competing metanarratives and has better explanatory power in dealing with the details. The view of the whole must account for the parts, and the understanding of the parts must reshape the view of the whole. Overall, there is little exegesis in the book by Jeon, and when the author takes issue with our work in four or five places, he does not offer any exegetical evidence for his rejection of our positions. There is also a simple repeating of the analysis provided so many years ago by Meredith Kline for dealing with the biblical text. Ironically, contrary to the review by Jonathan Brack and Jared Oliphint, who questioned our appeal to the cultural setting in our interpretation of Scripture,2 covenant theologians, as represented by Jeon and Kline, do that very thing.

Note from Stephen Wellum

Given the opportunity to write a revised edition, I carefully edited and rewrote parts 1 and 3. I sought to update, clarify, and remove anything that was not necessary to our overall argument and biblical-theological proposal. Some of the reviews of the first edition illegitimately picked up on material in footnotes and then pitted those discussions against other sections of the book. Or other reviews jumped on a word or phrase—replacement or via media—and then attributed positions to us that we did not intend. In light of this, I was careful to remove material or restate it to achieve maximal clarity. It is our hope that readers will read our new edition by first seeking to do justice to our argument on its own terms before offering a critique of a view that we do not endorse. But as we learned in writing the first edition, no matter how carefully one states one’s position—especially when it centers on key differences between theological systems—it is difficult to hear exactly what the other person is saying. It is our prayer that this revised edition will continue to foster discussion among Christians who agree on so much but still differ on important details, especially in terms of how the Bible’s overall plotline works. For this reason, I have sought to clarify our view and state other theological positions in a more precise and accurate manner.

In part 1, I sought to describe with greater precision the nature of biblical and systematic theology, the theological systems of dispensational and covenant theology, and some of the hermeneutical differences between our proposal and the dominant theological systems within evangelical theology. My description and exposition of these matters did not change substantially, but I have updated the footnotes and, I believe, nuanced the discussion better.

In part 3, I thoroughly reworked chapter 16, which summarizes our overall viewpoint, trying to discuss with more clarity our proposal of progressive covenantalism. We added chapter 17, on the New Testament, with the aim of discussing how the progression of the biblical covenants reaches its fulfillment in Christ and his people, the church. One of the main criticisms of the first edition is that it did not adequately discuss the New Testament data. We sought to respond to this criticism by Peter adding more New Testament material in his exposition of the covenants and by me adding this new chapter. Obviously, the New Testament data could be...