Dear Editor,
Donald John MacLean, the President-elect of Westminster Seminary UK, gives an excellent summary of most of the main Biblical covenants in his article in the January 2025 edition of en.
However, it should be noted that he gives the classic Presbyterian viewpoint which lies at one end of a spectrum of views on the question of the continuity/discontinuity of the covenants. the Psalmist’s In his book Answering Perplexity – New Covenant Newness in the Book of Psalms (IVP, NSBT), James Hely Hutchinson gives seven different views along the spectrum on this issue (p.9), ranging from the serial continuity of ‘Westminster covenantalism’ (MacLean’s view) through to the radical discontinuity of ‘Classic Dispensationalism’.
Before going further, I want to underline that this is not a primary gospel issue. But for readers of en, and for the sake of balance, it would perhaps be helpful to give a fuller account of the issue rather than allow readers to think that the Westminster view is the only evangelical view.
For all its brilliance, let me suggest some areas where MacLean’s view, in my opinion, falls short.
First, he fails to give due weight to the radical newness and relative glory of the New Covenant. In answer to the question ‘What is new about the New Covenant’, he claims that the things mentioned in Jeremiah 31 and quoted in Hebrews 8, such as the law written on believers’ hearts and every believer knowing the Lord personally and directly, ‘are not really that new’.
This is like saying that travelling by air from the UK to the USA is not really that different from playing with a model airplane in London and telling your friends that you are ‘flying to New York’.
What the writer omits is the watershed, definitive Biblical contrast between the Old Covenant before Christ and the New Covenant brought into being by Christ.
The writer omits to say that the New Covenant is no longer tied to a plot of land in the Eastern Mediterranean and a corporate body of physical descendants of Abraham together with proselytes who become Jews. One of the glories of the New Covenant is that it embraces the whole world and is open to individuals from every tribe, tongue, people and nation who together form the new people of God.
The writer omits to say that the apostle Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 3:10, ‘what once had glory (the Old Covenant) has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it (the New Covenant)’. As Jeremiah 31:32 says, the New Covenant is ‘not like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt’.
What is more, the writer, in my view (I know this is an area of disagreement among Bible-believing Christians!) wrongly attributes to the Old Covenant era the fulfilment of the promised circumcision of the heart. Paul explains in Colossians 2: 11 that ‘In [Christ] (and thus not before Christ) also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands’. Not until Christ poured out His Spirit were the hearts of believers circumcised. And it is the hearts of all believers that are circumcised, both men and women. This is how ‘in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith’ (Gal. 3:14). The promise of the Spirit was given to Abraham. The fulfilment of this promise was given through Christ Jesus at Pentecost.
Why is all this important? Because to reduce the New Covenant to just another covenant along the journey of God’s people, albeit final and permanent, rather than to give it its rightful place as a wonderful and paradigm-shifting fulfillment of the Old Covenant promises, risks diminishing the glory of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ; including the glory of the Incarnation (‘no-one has ever seen God’; yet ‘we have seen his glory’ in the Word made flesh – John 1:18,14), the glory of the cross (John 13:31,32) and the glory of the finished work of Christ (under the New Covenant, Christ has perfectly kept the Law for us, so this New Covenant cannot ever fail and we can be assured of our salvation through faith in Christ alone).
I have no doubt that the writer has no intention at all to diminish the glory of God and the Lord Jesus Christ; but I fear that this is the effect of his line of reasoning.
Of course, the age to come is one of eternal and immeasurable glory, the ultimate and permanent paradigm shift. But even in this age, during the overlap of the ages, the New Covenant is glorious in a way vastly exceeding the Old Covenant. We must never downplay that contrast.
Having said this, I recognise that there is a spectrum of views within orthodoxy. As I say above, I think it would be helpful to have other views within orthodoxy shared in en alongside ‘Westminster covenantalism’.
Needless to say, wherever we are on the spectrum on this issue, let us never lose sight of what fundamentally unites us, our shared and vital belief in the steadfast, covenant love, mercy, grace, faithfulness and salvation of our glorious triune God. To Him be all the glory!
Yours sincerely,
John Samuel
Southampton
Donald John MacLean responds: It is important to acknowledge that there are a variety of views on covenant within evangelical thought. In writing the article I was very much conscious of this and was not seeking to advocate for a particular confessional position (though I do personally and joyfully subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith!). Instead, I was simply making the case for the importance of the covenant motif as a unifying theme of Scripture: advancing a ‘mere continuity’ argument, if you will, avoiding touching on many topics that divide. The ‘mere continuity’ argument in my article happily affirms the glorious superiority of the New Covenant, and the verses which negatively speak of the Old Covenant (it is relatively less glorious, and now that the Saviour the Old Covenant promised has come, it is death to return to it for salvation). Nevertheless there is also clear continuity – both in promise (‘I will be your God’) and experience (e.g. Rom. 4:1-12, Heb. 11). For example, Abraham is our father in the faith (Gal. 3:7), had the gospel preached to him (Gal. 3:8), placed his hope, not in a small piece of land, but that he was heir of the cosmos (Rom. 4:13) and was looking for a continuing city (Heb. 11:10). As such, Abraham is ‘the man of faith’ (Gal. 3:9). This continuity leads, surely, to Article 7 of the 39 Articles: ‘The Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises.’ Given this, forgiveness of sins, is ‘not really that new’ in the sense Old Testament believers had their sins forgiven. But, it is new in the sense Hebews 10:15-18 explains the newness – namely, finality and permanence. Far from detracting from the glory of Christ, this honours the Saviour who is so great His work saved those who embraced by faith the promise of His coming, and those who now by faith embrace the reality that He has come. Finally let me say, I heartily agree, ‘let us never lose sight of what fundamentally unites us, our shared and vital belief in the steadfast, covenant love, mercy, grace, faithfulness and salvation of our glorious triune God.’ Amen!
