Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 38:1 (NA 1987)
Article: The Unity And Diversity Of God’s Covenants
Author: Roger T. Beckwith

TynBul 38:1 (1987) p. 93

The Unity And Diversity Of God’s Covenants

Roger T. Beckwith

The Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture 1986

It is now thirty three years since the late Professor John Murray gave his Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture ‘The Covenant of Grace’, which was published by the Tyndale Press the following year, 1954. In a characteristically informative and thoughtful way, Murray briefly traced the development of covenant theology in Reformed circles from its pregnant beginnings in the writings of Johann Heinrich Bullinger and especially in book 2 of John Calvin’s Institutes, through the careful elaboration of the concept in the Dutch federal theologians of the seventeenth century (from their pioneer Johannes Cocceius [Johann Koch] to their consummator Herman Witsius),1 and up to the expositions by his immediate predecessors, G. C. Aalders2 and Geerhardus Vos.3 He went on to examine the meaning of the term ‘covenant’ and its use in the Bible, taking in turn God’s covenants with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel, with David, and the New Covenant. Murray affirmed, with all his predecessors, that the covenant of grace is essentially one in all its different dispensations, being centred on God’s promise ‘I will be your God and ye shall be my people’ (Lv. 26:12 etc.), but denied, with Aalders and Vos, that such covenants are mutual compacts; rather, he held, they are one-sided sovereign grants, made by the gracious initiative of God.

Since the time of Murray’s lecture, the subject of God’s covenants has attracted an unusual amount of attention, particularly from Old Testament scholars. In 1961 and 1967 the two volumes of the English translation of Walther Eichrodt’s Theology of the Old Testament appeared.4 The first German

TynBul 38:1 (1987) p. 94

edition of this work had been published as early as 1933, and subsequent writing had not significantly altered the author’s ideas, but it is interesting among contemporary continental theologies of the Old Testament as the one which attempted to organize all its material under the concept of covenant, as being an original and basic element in Israel’s religion. A reassertion of the opposite view, previously championed by Julius Wellhausen, that the covenant idea was a late development in Israel’s religious thinking, was issued in 1969: this was the Bundestheologie im Alten Testament of Lothar Perlitt.You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
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