A Brief Overview of Covenant Theology in earliest Christianity

Ligon Duncan

Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, MS
Adjunct Professor, Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, MS
Council, Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

The covenant idea was more significant in the writings of particular early ante-Nicene theologians than has generally been admitted in patristic research or general surveys of the history of the covenant idea in the Christian tradition. Indeed, even a brief survey of the covenant vocabulary in the theological writings of the early ante-Nicene period demonstrates a significant usage, development, and modification of the covenant concept as it is found in the OT and NT writings and in early Judaism. Investigation reveals that the covenant idea functions in several arenas of early Christian thought. It is employed (1) to stress moral obligations incumbent upon Christians; (2) to show God's grace in including the Gentiles in the Abrahamic blessings; (3) to deny the reception of these promises to the Israel of the flesh, that is, Israel considered merely as an ethnic entity; (4) to demonstrate continuity in the divine economy; and (5) to explain discontinuity in the divine economy.

            In reviewing the role of early Christian covenant thought in these areas, one will find that (1) the pre-Nicene theologians usually take OT covenant passages (not NT passages) as the starting point in their applications of the covenant concept to Christian living; (2) the early Christian use of the covenant idea evidences that they understood the covenant to be both unilateral and bilateral, promissory and obligatory, to bring divine blessings and entail human obedience; (3) these writings also show that, from the very earliest times, Christian authors (following OT and NT examples) have employed the covenant concept as a key structural idea in their presentations of redemptive history; (4) contrary to the suggestions of previous studies, there is no evidence of a gap in the usage of the covenant idea after the era of the NT writings; (5) the covenant idea was closely linked to the early Christian self-understanding as the people of God; (6) the covenant idea is not monolithic in the thought of the authors surveyed. It is employed with differing emphases and takes on varying shades of meaning in their respective writings; (7) genetic connections in specific usages of the covenant idea can be found in different pre-Nicene authors (e.g., the idea of an Adamic universal moral law, from Justin to Irenaeus to Tertullian).

            If one reviews the role of the covenant idea in the writings of the NT, the Apostolic Fathers, and Justin Martyr, as well as in Josephus and Philo, in order to provide background for comparison and contrast with subsequent theological reflection on the covenants in Christian theology (thus helping to insure that later categories and ideas are not being intruded or imposed upon the patristic material), and then considers, in turn, the covenant idea in Melito, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, and Novatian, inventorying in each the specific employments of the covenant idea, one gains a bird’s eye view of the covenant idea in ante-Nicene theology. Such a view also reveals the significance of this theological locus for their overall systems.

            The study of this subject is significant for at least these following reasons: (1) It confirms current research on the Jewish matrix of early Christianity, from a vantage-point not yet exploited. (2) It provides greater detail of the early Christian covenant thought which is now being acknowledged to have been influential on the sixteenth-century Reformers (such as Bullinger and Calvin). (3) It fills a significant lacuna in the history of ideas. (4) It challenges the viability of the interpretive schema of what is being called “the new perspective” on Paul, by giving a fuller account of the earliest pre-Nicene and post-NT covenant thought in relation to soteriology and sphragistics.