Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 76:1 (Spring 2014)
Article: Review Article: Questioning The Progress In Progressive Covenantalism: A Review Of Gentry And Wellum’s "Kingdom Through Covenant"
Author: Jonathan M. Brack

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WTJ 76:1 (Spring 2014) p. 189

Review Article:
Questioning The Progress In Progressive Covenantalism:
A Review Of Gentry And Wellum’s Kingdom Through Covenant

Jonathan M. Brack

And

Jared S. Oliphint

Peter J. Gentry, professor of Old Testament Interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Stephen J. Wellum, professor of Christian Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, have written Kingdom Through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, which contains a specific diagnosis of problems in current biblical-theological and systematic-theological thinking, along with a proposed solution:

It is our conviction that the present ways of unpacking the biblical covenants across the Canon, especially as represented by dispensational and covenant theology (and their varieties), are not quite right. That is why we believe it is time to present an alternative reading which seeks to rethink and mediate these two theological traditions in such a way that we learn from both of them but also provide an alternative—a via media. We are convinced that there is a more accurate way to understand the relationship of the biblical covenants which makes better sense of the overall presentation of Scripture and which, in the end, will help us resolve some of our theological differences. (p. 23)

Fairly early on in the book we are told that both covenant theology and dispensational theology are inaccurate in their presentation of what Scripture teaches. For our present purposes this “new covenant theology” or “progressive covenantalism,” as they call it, and its relationship to covenant theology in particular will be addressed. Addressing the project’s comments on dispensational theology would be worthwhile, but would take more space than is reasonable here.

WTJ 76:1 (Spring 2014) p. 190

I. The Aim Of Kingdom Through Covenant

The authors’ proposed middle approach seeks to be more biblical than covenant theology. Their method for achieving greater faithfulness to the biblical text is clearly stated:

(1) to exegete the main texts for each of the covenants, paying attention to cultural context, linguistic data, literary devices and structures, and larger story; and (2) to exegete key texts that explicate the relationship between one or more covenants, so that the metanarrative is constructed from Scripture and not from an external metanarrative, i.e., philosophy or worldview. We would claim that classic covenant theology on the one hand and dispensational theology on the other (whether classic or so-called progressive) entail too much in the metanarrative that is external to Scripture. Mo...

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