By maintaining a distinction between the substance or essence and the administrations or dispensations of the covenant of grace, paedobaptist covenantalists understand a significant unity across the OT and NT that has direct ramifications for ecclesiology, especially as such a construction grounds a direct continuity between Israel and the church and establishes the basis for infant baptism. First, the substance of the covenant of grace, which accounts for the unity of the testaments and was already alluded
29According to Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:215-16, “All the grace that is extended to the creation after the fall comes to it from the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The Son appeared immediately after the fall, as Mediator, as the second and final Adam who occupies the place of the first, restores what the latter corrupted, and accomplishes what he failed to do. And the Holy Spirit immediately acted as the Paraclete, the one applying the salvation acquired by Christ. All the change that occurs, all the development and progress in insight and knowledge, accordingly, occurs on the side of the creature. . . . The Father is the eternal Father, the Son the eternal Mediator, the Holy Spirit the eternal Paraclete. For that reason the Old Testament is also to be viewed as one in essence and substance with the New Testament. . . . Although Christ completed his work on earth only in the midst of history and although the Holy Spirit was not poured out till the day of Pentecost, God nevertheless was able, already in the days of the Old
Testament, to fully distribute the benefits to be acquired by the Son and the Spirit. Old Testament believers were saved in no other way than we. There is one faith, one Mediator, one way of salvation, and one covenant of grace.” On this point, see also Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 528-35; Hodge, Systematic Theology, 2:366-73. For the covenant of redemption as the basis of the covenant of grace, see Geerhardus Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in Redemptive History and Biblical
Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P &
R, 1980), 252.
to, is God’s sovereign initiative to dispense grace to sinful man so that the Lord will be God to his people through the mediatory work of Christ, comprising of the same promises made to Adam after the fall (Gen 3:15), to Noah (Gen 6:9; 7:1; 9:9, 26-27), to Abraham (Gen 17:7), and through Moses (Exod 3:15; 19:5; Deut 29:13), David (2 Sam 7:14) , and lastly, having its fullness in the new covenant (Jer 31:33; Heb 8). The promised benefits of the covenant of grace, namely reconciliation and communion with God, was granted to OT and NT believers alike. Brown and Keele write, “The covenant of grace was
administered by type and shadow . . . during the times of the patriarchs . . . and of the nation Israel, as believers put their trust in God’s promise to send the Messiah.”
30Nevertheless, according to the wisdom of God the same covenant of grace was dispensed in diverse manners. Turretin explains that the covenant of grace
had various forms and as it were faces, on account of the varied economy of the mystery of Christ (who is its foundation), which God so willed to administer as to propose it at first somewhat obscurely and then more clearly; first in the promise and then in the fulfillment.
31Clearer manifestations of the covenant of grace are revealed through redemptive history, but the protoevangelium (Gen 3:15), Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and new
30Brown and Keele, Sacred Bond, 59. The unity and substance of the covenant of grace through the different dispensations or administrations is maintained for a variety of reasons including the identity of the mediator (Jesus Christ) being the same in both the OT and NT, the summary expression of the covenant that God will be the covenant Lord to his people occurs throughout Scripture, the same condition of faith is required throughout, and the way of salvation is the same in the sense of the gospel being promised (as in the OT) or completed and manifested (NT). See Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 277- 80; Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 2:192-205; Witsius, Economy of Covenants, 1:292-306; Hodge, Systematic Theology, 2:364-73; and Robertson, Christ of the Covenants, 45-52.
31Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 2:216. Similarly, Witsius, Economy of Covenants, 1:308 (cf. 291), writes, “The difference of the testaments consists in the different manner of dispensing and proposing the same saving grace, and in some different adjuncts and circumstances. Whatever was typical in that dispensation, and denoted imperfection, and an acknowledgment that the ransom was not yet paid, belongs to the Old Testament. Whatever shews that the redemption is actually wrought out, is peculiar to the New Testament.” Karlberg, Covenant Theology, 22, highlighting the unity of the covenant of grace in Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575), observes that the “common formulation of the essential nature of the Covenant of Grace is imbedded within the Reformed tradition. The employment of scholastic terminology is clearly evident, viz., the terms ‘substance’ and ‘accidents.’ In substance there is unity; in accidents (the historical administrations of the single Covenant of Grace) there is diversity.”
covenants are all administrations of the covenant of grace. Although these covenants differ in their accidental properties (nonessential parts) and are diverse and particular in terms of mode, they all profoundly agree in their substance.
32While all of the post-fall covenants are part of the unified covenant of grace, one covenantal administration plays a foundational role. According to Reymond, “Once the covenant of grace had come to expression in the spiritual promises of the Abrahamic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant became salvifically definitive for all ages to come.”
33The Abrahamic covenant is the most normative covenant for the NT economy. Berkhof writes,
[The] Sinaitic covenant is an interlude, covering a period in which the real character of the covenant of grace, that is, its free and gracious character, is somewhat
eclipsed by all kinds of external ceremonies and forms. . . . In the covenant with
32See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.10.2, ed. John T. Neil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics, vols. 20-21 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 429, 448-49; Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 279-85; Witsius, Economy of Covenants, 1:291-306; Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 2:192-205, 216-40; Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:216-28; Murray, The Covenant of Grace, 27-32. Robertson, Christ of the Covenants, 28 (cf. 34), writes, “The cumulative evidence of the Scriptures points definitely toward the unified character of the biblical covenants. God’s multiple bonds with his people ultimately unite into a single relationship. Particular details of the covenants may vary. A definite line of progress may be noted. Yet the covenants of God are one.” Note also Cornelius P. Venema, “Covenant Theology and Baptism,” in The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism, ed. Gregg Strawbridge (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2003), 215-17; Randy Booth, “Covenant Transition,” in The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism, 175-200. Reformed Baptist covenant theologians differ among themselves on the topic of the administrations of the covenant of grace. According to Denault, The Distinctiveness, 71, seventeenth-century Reformed Baptists understood a progressive revelation of the covenant of grace before its establishment. Thus, the “Abrahamic Covenant, the Sinaitic Covenant and the Davidic Covenant were not the Covenant of Grace, nor administrations of it; however, the Covenant of Grace was revealed under these various administrations.” On the other hand, Walter J. Chantry, “The Covenants of Works and of Grace,” in Covenant Theology, 108, argues that every “biblical covenant after the Fall is revealed by God as a form of the Covenant of Grace. . . . All biblical covenants (with Adam after the Fall, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, New) are but varying administrations of the Covenant of Grace. They all embody the same fundamental principles as to the way of salvation for sinners—through trust in the Seed of the woman.” So also David Kingdon, Children of Abraham: A Reformed Baptist View of Baptism, the Covenant, and Children (Sussex, UK: Carey, 1975), 21, 38.
33Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 512. Reymond adds, “So significant are the promises of grace in the Abrahamic covenant, found in Genesis 12:1-3; 13:14-16; 15:18-21; 17:1-16; 22:16-18, that it is not an overstatement to declare these verses, from the covenantal perspective, as the most important verses in the Bible.” Ibid., 513. Also highlighting how the concrete form of the covenant of grace is found in the Abrahamic covenant is Murray, Collected Writings, 4:223-24; Golding, Covenant Theology, 122;
Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 295-97.
Abraham, on the other hand, the promise and the faith that responds to the promise are made emphatic.
34The Abrahamic is the model covenant for how God works out the covenant of redemption through the progress of revelation as the Abrahamic is tightly viewed in relation to the new covenant. Berkhof explains that the Abrahamic covenant “is still in force and is essentially identical with the ‘new covenant’ of the present dispensation.”
35The accent upon the Abrahamic covenant in the covenant of grace does not mean that paedobaptist covenant theologians do not see a qualitative difference between the Abrahamic and new covenant. The new covenant does not abrogate or cancel the Abrahamic, but fills out, extends, and expands it. The new covenant is really “new” in how it is distinguished from the old covenant: it is designed and received by all nations, dispensed with the highest level of grace with sin definitively dealt with, results in the democratization of the teaching and priestly offices (or the end of individuals as covenant mediators), marks out a new age with the Holy Spirit poured out on all flesh, and is the permanent and final arrangement before the restoration of all things.
36In sum, the new
34Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 296-97. See also Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 37, 54-57, 60, 70, 75, 106, as he views the Abrahamic covenant as an unconditional covenant of promise in contrast to the Mosaic (covenant of law). While the Mosaic is still part of the covenant of grace, the Abrahamic covenant is presented as having the basis and direct connection to the new covenant.
35Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 633; cf. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Children of Promise: The Case for Baptizing Infants (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 23-24; Brown and Keele, Sacred Bond, 86-87.
Murray, The Covenant of Grace, 27, similarly writes, “The new economy as covenant attaches itself to the Old Testament covenant promise and cannot be contrasted with the Old Testament covenant in respect of that which constitutes the essence of the covenant of grace and promise. We can express the fact that the new covenant is the expansion and fulfillment of the Abrahamic by saying that it was just because the promise to Abraham had the bonded and oath-bound character of a covenant that its realization in the fullness of the time was inviolably certain. The new covenant in respect of its being a covenant does not differ from the Abrahamic as a sovereign administration of grace, divine in its inception, establishment, confirmation, and fulfillment.” Hodge, Systematic Theology, 2:373, also, appealing to Gal 3:13-28 and Rom 3:21, argues,
“The covenant under which we live and according to the terms of which we are to be saved, is the identical covenant made with Abraham.”
36Other reasons may be offered for the “newness” of the new covenant. See Hodge, Systematic Theology, 2:376-77; Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 299-300; Murray, The Covenant of Grace, 31-32;
Witsius, Economy of Covenants, 1:308; Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 2:232-33; Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:223-24; Robertson, Christ of the Covenants, 57-63, 275-86, 293-96; McManigal, Encountering Christ of the Covenants, 101-8; G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 730-40; Jeffrey D. Neill, “The